Brussels seeking greater control over member states' borders

European Commissioner for home affairs Cecilia Malmström said the new proposal was meant to safeguard free movement in a borderless Union. “As a general rule [it should] require a decision to be taken at the Union level, rather than for such decision to be taken unilaterally at the national level,” she said.

Border controls for predictable events, such as football matches, will have to be decided by qualified majority voting. But in case of unforeseen events, member countries can take unilateral action only for a period not exceeding five days, after which the EU has to decide whether to grant an extension or not.

France, Germany and Spain voiced strong objection to this a few days ago when a draft of the Commission’s proposals was leaked to the press.

Malmström made no secret of the fact that the proposal resulted from a recent border row between Italy and France, which adopted their own measures to deal with an influx of migrants from Tunisia earlier this year. She said that althouhg the Commission had found that neither country had breached EU law, “in spirit, it was more of a violation.”

“A coordinated, EU-based response would allow all European interests to be taken into account. Such a response would address situations where a Member State faces a serious

short-term, largely localised, threat to public policy or internal security, as well as situations

with wider and longer-term implications,” Malmström said.

Malmström said border control should only be reintroduced as a last resort in these circumstances, and only after other measures have been taken to stabilise the situation at the relevant external border.

EU member states can temporarily reintroduce border controls at their internal borders in exceptional circumstances, where there is a “serious threat to public policy or internal security”. If the threats motivating the re-introduction are foreseeable, the Member State in question must notify other Member States and the Commission ‘as soon as possible’ with all relevant information about the scope and duration of the re-introduction, and the reasons for doing so. In urgent cases, the re-introduction may be effected immediately.

The Commission reported in October 2010 that that this possibility to re-introduce internal border controls had been used 22 times since October 2006 – most recently by Norway and Sweden in response to the terrorist incidents in Norway.

In most cases, though, the re-introduction of border controls has been used to enable police authorities to manage the security implications of major sporting events, political demonstrations, or high-profile political meetings.