2691115301_f3b8699d5a_b.jpg Justice & Home Affairs ‘Reintroduction of internal border checks Police cooperation & Europol Eurojust Dublin Regulation ●‘Franco-Italian affair’ (2011) ●Italian government issued Schengen visas to 25.000 Tunisians migrants following an uprising in Tunisia ●France temporarily closed its border with Italy in April 2011. ●Consequently, Schengen Border Code was revised in 2013 (artt. 23-25): ●providing grounds and time limits under which Schengen states are entitled to introduce intra-state border controls on persons ●tasking the Commission with the evaluation of reasons and applications of these emergency measures ● – Reintroduction of internal border checks Reintroduction of internal border checks ●13 September 2015: German temporary reintroduction of border controls ●controls at the German-Austrian land border ●justification: “uncontrolled and unmanageable influx of third country nationals affecting public order and internal security” ●on 12 October a prolongation of temporary controls was announced ● ●15 September 2015: Austrian temporary reintroduction of border ●Justification: mass inflows and the security challenge it presented (overburdening the police, emergency services and public infrastructure) ●controls at the borders with Hungary, Italy, Slovenia and Slovakia ● two subsequent prolongations – for 20 days (under Articles 23 and 24 SBC) ●Austria provided in an annex a list of all designated border crossing points as required by Article 23 SBC ● ●16 September 2015: Slovenian temporary reintroduction of border controls ●Justification: uncontrollable migration flows ●On 24 September Slovenia prolonged for a further 20 days ●12 November 2015, Sweden: immediate and ex-tended border controls ●justification: serious threat to public policy and internal security resulting from the unprecedented migratory pressure and “ensuing significant challenges to the functioning of Swedish society” (strains on housing, health care, schooling and social services) ●controls were extended until 11 December ●25 November 2015: Norway reintroduces border controls the following day ●justification: unpredictable migratory flows amounting to a serious threat to public policy and internal security ●controls were extended until 26 December – ●On 13 November France reintroduces border controls ●justification: security of conference on climate change from 13 November to 13 December ●these controls were retained after the attacks in Paris (of 13 November) ● ● – ●Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Switzerland did not introduce controls at their internal borders ●Belgium and the Netherlands intensified the (police) controls in the zones behind their internal borders ●in most of these cases economic and practical reasons influenced the decision not to introduce border controls ●“systematic controls at the highways between Antwerp and the Netherlands, at the borders near Basel and Geneva or at the Øresund Bridge would create massive congestion of cross-frontier workers commuting by car.” (Guild et al. 2015: 9) ● ● ● – throughout second half 2015 ●Since 2015, internal border controls have been reinstalled more than 80 times, ●with Member States justifying these measures on account of ●secondary movements of migrants, ●the threat of terrorism and ●the situation at the external borders of the EU. ●Then, in 2021, the Covid-19 pandemic introduced another reason: public health risk ● ● ● – 2021 The ‘Covid Notifications’ of 2021 But also the ‘usual’ motivation (since 2015) • It has become ‘everyday practice’ And it has become ‘everyday practice’ 2691115301_f3b8699d5a_b.jpg •controls have overtly been reintroduced in accordance with EU law •Commission was, as evaluator, often sympathetic to the justifications (whether in relation to the extraordinary influx, perceived threats to public order, internal security or public health risks) •there are still points requiring attention, though Reviewing the notifications Point 1 Point 2 even less convincing are justifications referring to hard security concerns (e.g. possibility of ‘radicalised people’ hiding among refugees or illegal migrants) Point 3 Conclusive Remarks deployment of police checks in border areas raised the question what the difference is between police checks in border areas and border controls Commission proposes a strategy on the future of Schengen, scheduled for the second quarter of 2021 Still, with the principled use of the “symbolism of Schengen” the Commission and EP are often outplayed by the pragmatic cost-benefit reasoning of the member states in the discussion on internal border checks (Cornelisse, 2020) the 2013 SBC expressly stipula-ted that “a large number” of refugees or secondary movements, as such, should not be considered a threat to security, even though it is widely used Conclusion by Guild et al. (2015: 17): the overarching interest is “protecting the free movement of persons as laid down in Article 20 SBC, with only limited and conditioned options for internal border checks”. SBC revision of 2021 •14 December 2021: proposal for a regulation amending SBC •The main elements of the proposal: ØA new coordination mechanism dealing with health threats ØA safeguard mechanism providing a common response at the internal borders in situations of threats affecting a majority of Member States ØUpdated procedural requirements for reintroduction of internal border controls ØPromote the use of alternative measures (such as more operational police checks in border regions) ØLimiting impact of internal border checks on border regions – e.g. by establishing ‘green lanes’ • Leading question for presentations of today’s lecture: Should internal borders be reinstated in the EU? END Santino Lo Bianco PhD Email: s.lobianco@hhs.nl • KONEC