Schengen members get cold feet

Date: 12/02/1998

In the wake of the uproar over Kurdish refugees fleeing to Italian ports, Simon Coss examines what all the fuss has really been about

AMID all the hue and cry surrounding the recent 'Kurdish crisis', one nagging question has been studiously ignored by politicians and national officials alike.

It is quite simply this: in a European Union numbering 370 million inhabitants just how 'massive' is an influx of 3,000 asylum-seekers? As one EU immigration expert noted: "Deciding that 3,000 people is a 'massive influx' is clearly a political decision."

Yet the reaction of EU governments to the refugees' arrival on Italian shores suggested that the Union was about to be engulfed by a tide of foreigners bent on depriving Europeans of their jobs and their possessions and likely to spark riots across the continent.

In early January, German Interior Minister Manfred Kanther described the arrival of the refugees as "a threatening situation". Soon after, EU foreign ministers hastily drew up a detailed 46-point action plan to deal with the problem, which was welcomed by law and order ministers a week later.

Under the scheme, the EU will strengthen special contacts with the Turkish authorities and international organisations such as the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, training for border guards will be increased and the Union's external frontier controls will be tightened.

These measures followed several months of diplomatic bickering between EU member states over who was responsible for the situation, spearheaded by Germany and France, who both put the blame fairly and squarely on Italy.

German Chancellor Helmut Kohl telephoned Italian Premier Romano Prodi asking what the Italian authorities planned to do to ensure that Kurds entering Italy would not make their way further north.

And to make Bonn's views absolutely clear, German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel then called on Rome to tighten up security at its borders. At the same time, Paris and Vienna responded to the 'crisis' by reinforcing their own frontier controls with Italy.

The underlying question, however, remains. Why has this particular situation caused such an outcry?

Immigration experts point out that far more than 3,000 refugees entered the Union following the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. Between 1994 and 1995, 330,000 Bosnian refugees fled to Germany, yet widespread panic did not ensue.

Some critics suggest that the number of illegal immigrants entering Germany every year via central and eastern Europe far exceeds the total number of Kurds who landed on Italy's shores. "Three thousand people should not be an impossible number to absorb into the Schengen area," said the immigration expert.

It is in this statement that the underlying reason for the current panic may be found: Schengen.

At the end of next month, Rome and Vienna are set to become full members of the Schengen free movement zone, within which people can move between countries without frontier checks.

On 29 March, controls at land and sea crossings between Italy and the other Schengen states (Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Germany, Spain and Portugal) will officially be abolished - those on air links were ended last October - and it will be possible to move freely within the Union from Berlin to Naples.

The prospect terrifies Paris and Bonn.

Germany faces a general election later this year and the immigration issue will play a significant role in determining whether Kohl is re-elected for a record fifth term. The country is already home to half a million Kurds and racially motivated attacks have sharply increased in recent years.

France is undergoing serious political turmoil because of record levels of unemployment, and any suggestion that more foreigners are on their way to 'steal' scarce jobs is likely to receive a hostile reaction from the electorate.

The two countries have always been less than complimentary about Italy's ability adequately to patrol its thousands of kilo-metres of coastline. They have also made it clear that, in their view, Rome's immigration rules leave a lot to be desired.

Illegal immigrants apprehended in Italy are not arrested but given 15 days to leave the country, and critics say around 80% of them simply disappear.

France claims that up to one-third of its illegal immigrants arrive via Italy.

Plans to reform the Italian rules are currently being debated in the national parliament, but they have yet to be approved. Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro's new year promise that any individual openly seeking political asylum would have his or her case fully examined was also greeted with gritted teeth in neighbouring capitals.

The problem for Bonn and Paris, however, is that they appear to have boxed themselves into a corner. They have agreed that frontier checks with Italy must end and there seems to be nothing they can do about it.

Or is there?

Under the terms of the Schengen agreement, any signatory can, in exceptional circumstances, introduce 'temporary' checks at borders with another signatory state.

France has already used this excuse to maintain frontier controls with Belgium and Luxembourg. Paris argues that this is necessary to stop French 'drugs tourists' taking advantage of the Netherlands' famously liberal drugs policies.

In theory, it should be possible for a Schengen signatory state to introduce temporary controls if, for example, it faced a possible immigration crisis sparked by, just for the sake of argument, a 'massive influx' of refugees into a neighbouring country.

Schengen experts concur. "I think introducing temporary controls after 29 March could be a possibility," said one.

Whatever finally happens at the end of next month, the Kurdish immigration debate has shown quite clearly that Schengen is in trouble.

The belated calls for a common European response to the issue which culminated in the action plan approved last month did little to mask the underlying mistrust which still exists between Schengen countries. The signatories to the agreement do not seem to have confidence in each other's ability to guard the Union's external borders.

In addition, the obsession with the whole immigration issue seems to have led the Union to make decisions which not only contradict statements made elsewhere but leave it on somewhat shaky moral ground.

The action plan calls for greater cooperation between the EU and Ankara to ensure that Turkey prevents refugees from setting sail from its ports. Yet one of the reasons Turkey was snubbed in its bid for Union membership at last December's Luxembourg summit was because of its human rights record - which begs the question of what will happen to people, whether they be political refugees or even illegal immigrants, when Ankara gets hold of them.

In addition, calls to return Iraqi Kurds to so-called 'safe havens' in that country at a time when US air strikes seem imminent can hardly be seen as a satisfactory solution.

It is unlikely that Schengen will collapse. The deal is set to be integrated into mainstream EU law with the ratification of the Amsterdam Treaty and all member states - bar the UK and Ireland - have said they want to become full members. Indeed, the current grouping even counts non-EU countries Iceland and Norway amongst its ranks.

But it seems strange that governments appear so committed to joining a system which many of them do not seem to want to be part of.

See also Section 3.2.a.