Schengen border controls to be extended (again)

Commission says countries that took action during migration crisis can keep the measures in place.

European countries that introduced temporary border controls during the migration crisis can keep them in place for another three months, the European Commission said Wednesday, well past a suggested end date for the measures.

In October the Commission granted another three-month extension to Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, all members of the passport-free Schengen zone. But a document published in March 2016, called “Back to Schengen,” earmarked December 2016 as “the target date for bringing to an end the exceptional safeguard measures taken,” in some cases as far back as September 2015.

Dimitris Avramopoulos, the European commissioner for migration, rejected suggestions that the move was in part influenced by German elections to be held in September. “Our decision is based on facts,” he said.

The Commission said that despite the migration crisis calming down, and the implementation of a series of measures to better manage the EU’s external borders — such as the launch of the European Border and Coast Guard last fall — it “considers that the conditions of the ‘Back to Schengen’ roadmap … have not yet been entirely fulfilled.”

One of the reasons for that, it said, was the significant number of irregular migrants and asylum seekers still in Greece and that “the situation remains fragile on the Western Balkans route” that connects Turkey to Europe.

In December, the Commission said other EU countries should “gradually” resume the transfer of migrants back to Greece under the bloc’s Dublin rules — which state that asylum applications must be processed by the first EU country the migrant set foot in — by mid-March. Other countries have not been able to send migrants back to Greece since 2011 when the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice identified systemic problems in the Greek asylum system.