New EU anger over Schengen delays

A proposed delay to the expansion of the EU’s Schengen borderless travel zone threatens to treat the EU’s newest citizens as second-class, warned eastern European EU leaders.

EU justice and interior ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Thursday agreed to delay the planned expansion until late 2008, because of ‘technical difficulties’ with a new Schengen super computer system, SIS II.

The decision was announced by EU justice chief Franco Frattini.

Border restrictions between the EU’s 10 newest, mainly eastern European, members and the rest of the EU were set to be lifted in October 2007.

The ‘technical difficulties’ argument was angrily disputed by many of the EU’s newest members as an excuse for reneging on earlier promises, amid ‘old’ member state fears of mass immigration.

“The old member states have no confidence in our capacity to control our external borders, even though we have invested heavily in doing just that,” said a Polish diplomat according to Le Figaro.

Slovak prime minister Robert Fico stressed that the decision marked the EU’s newest members down as second-class citizens.

“We were agreed with regard to Schengen, there is equality in the EU but sometimes some countries are more equal than others,” said Fico.

Polish prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski echoed Fico’s views.

“We do not think that the new EU members should be treated in a different way than the old members,” said Kaczynski.

Frattini played down the delay, saying that he did not rule out lifting some internal borders before 2008.

A formal decision on the new timetable will be taken by EU ministers in December.

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