Dismantling border controls

Summary:

Portugal has two outstanding priorities for its presidency in the field of justice and home affairs.

Firstly, it wants to ensure that towards the end of the year the border controls which divide the new member states that entered the Union in 2004 from the Schengen zone are dismantled. Land border controls for the central and eastern member states are set to come down in November, sea borders in January and air borders in March.

The second big task is tackling migration. Boatloads of immigrants are already making their way to Europe’s southern states and this issue of stemming the flow, while ensuring that people do not die on the way, will keep Lisbon busy at the start of its presidency.