18 April Schengen Committee

Date: 25/04/1996

THE signatories to the Schengen Convention on the abolition of internal border controls have formally agreed to open up their free-travel agreement to all five members of the Nordic Passport Union. At the meeting of the executive committee in The Hague, the ten Schengen countries granted Denmark, Sweden and Finland observer status and invited Norway and Iceland to sit in on their meetings from 1 May onwards. The three new observers formally declared their intention to become full members of the Schengen Agreement eventually.

FOR Norway and Iceland, which as non-EU members cannot formally sign up to the convention, the plan is to conclude a cooperation agreement which would preserve the free-travel zone of the Nordic Passport Union and integrate it into the Schengen space. The area would then stretch “from Portugal to Finland and Iceland to Greece”, declared the committee.

OBSERVER status gives a country the right to attend Schengen deliberations without officially participating in them. It is a transitional arrangement facilitating membership talks and subsequent full integration into Schengen policies. The status granted to Norway and Iceland is to be comprehensive enough to let both countries participate in all key Schengen arrangements, such as a common visa policy, the abolition of systematic internal border controls, and close cooperation in police matters.

THE committee also took note of the first yearly implementation report, evaluating the degree of cooperation achieved in the different areas of Schengen.

WHILE progress was generally considered satisfactory, the executive committee stated its wish that France and the Netherlands intensify their practical cooperation in order to persuade the former to abolish identity controls on its borders with Belgium and Luxembourg. Paris has asked for changes to the liberal Dutch drugs policy, accusing its government of turning the country into an open gate for drug smuggling, and has cited this as the reason for its refusal to drop the border controls with Belgium and Luxembourg. But the conflict shows no sign of abating. The Dutch government was moved to point out in a separate declaration that the Schengen Agreement does not call for a harmonised drugs policy. In an implicit rejection of the systematic pursuit of individual consumers, the Dutch also stressed that the thrust of cross-border police cooperation should be directed against “big organised international drugs crime organisations”.