France and Germany sought to drum up support among other European countries yesterday for new rules to make it easier to suspend passport-free travel in Europe, reflecting voter anxiety over large-scale migration.
At a meeting of EU interior ministers, French and German officials argued that member states needed more power over border rules to ensure security in the Schengen zone, where passport-free travel is allowed between 26 EU and non-EU states.
French interior minister Claude Gueant said Schengen was allowing illegal migrants to reach deep into Europe.
“Schengen is not functioning in a satisfactory manner,” he said. “There are, according to experts, some 400,000 people who have entered in an irregular manner. Between two and four million foreigners live clandestinely in Schengen countries.”
The push comes as French President Nicolas Sarkozy campaigns for the decisive round of presidential elections to be held on May 6th. Sarkozy has in the past pledged to halve immigration and pull France out of Schengen unless its external frontiers are strengthened.
Debates over immigration heated up in Europe in the last year when popular uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa led hundreds of thousands of people to seek refuge from violence. Many attempted to cross into Europe. The flow of illegal migrants has since slowed, but growing support for populist rhetoric across Europe, fuelled in part by high unemployment and public spending cuts, has kept the issue high on the public agenda. Critics have warned anti-immigration rhetoric was undermining one the main achievements of European integration.
“Regrettably, the winds of populism are affecting a key achievement of European integration – the free movement of persons within our borders,” European Council President Herman Van Rompuy said in Bucharest on Wednesday. Mr Gueant and German interior minister Hans-Peter Friedrich sent a letter last week to the Danish government – which holds the rotating EU presidency – responding to a proposal by the European Commission last year for new Schengen rules.