The European Parliament has approved new rules ensuring freedom of movement within the Schengen area, it was announced Wednesday.
The new system will prevent EU Member States from unilaterally deciding to reintroduce unnecessary controls at the internal borders without any European verification. It is expected to be adopted formally by the European Council in the autumn.
The new package, already agreed informally by Parliament and Council negotiators, includes two regulations. One establishes a new EU-based Schengen evaluation mechanism to deal with critical situations and the other amends the Schengen Borders Code to lay down common rules for the temporary re-imposition of checks at internal borders in exceptional cases.
It will soon be possible for inspection teams to make unannounced visits to monitor any attempt to introduce illegal border checks at internal borders. When the teams visit external borders, the member state concerned should be notified at least 24 hours in advance. Inspection teams will include experts from the member states, the Commission and EU agencies and bodies.
Notably, the existing Schengen Borders Code (SBC) already allows internal border checks to be temporarily reimposed in exceptional circumstances that could constitute a serious threat to public policy or internal security.
The amended SBC stresses that any reintroduction of border controls at internal borders should remain an exception and should take place only as a measure of last resort, for a strictly limited scope and period of time, based on specific objective criteria and on an assessment of its necessity which should be monitored at Union level.
In the event of a serious threat to public policy or internal security, checks could be reimposed for 30 days, and prolonged for up to six months. Where unforeseeable events require immediate action like a terrorist attack, member states could re-impose border checks unilaterally, for up to 10 days. Any prolongation would have to be monitored at EU level.
"Migration and the crossing of external borders by a large number of third-country nationals should not, per se, be considered to be a threat to public policy or to internal security," says the text.
Further, it states that Schengen candidate countries as well as those that are already members of the check-free area will be evaluated in the same way and subject to the same rules.
The border-free Schengen zone is made up of 25 countries comprising of 22 of the 27 European Union member states and three other European nations. The five EU member states which are not part of the Schengen zone are UK, the Republic of Ireland, Cyprus, Romania and Bulgaria, while non-EU member countries in the grouping are Switzerland, Iceland and Norway.
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