By Martin Banks - 27th April 2011
This is a clear case of an EU ideal colliding with reality
Gerard Batten
Italy and France have urged the EU to make changes to the Schengen treaty that currently allows passport-free travel through 25 member states after a row over immigration.
Designed as a step towards European integration, the treaty, signed in 1985, allows passport-free travel to 400m people in 25 nations in Europe.
But Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, said on Tuesday that Schengen must account for "exceptional" situations such as massive immigration flows.
Both leaders want member states to be able to re-impose internal border controls more easily.
They have sent a joint letter to the European commission and European council presidents, José Manuel Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy, urging proposals from the EU and agreement on a new system at a summit in Brussels of government heads of state and prime ministers in June.
A commission spokesman said it was drawing up new proposals to the current system which will be unveiled next week.
But it has resisted, with the support of most EU governments, Italian pressure to label the arrivals from North Africa an emergency.
Speaking after his meeting with Berlusconi, Sarkozy said, "We want Schengen to survive, but to survive Schengen must be reformed. We believe in free circulation but we believe in a state of law and a certain number of rules."
Berlusconi said, "We both believe that in exceptional circumstances there should be variations to the Schengen treaty".
The two countries are attempting to end a rift over immigration, after thousands of people from North Africa fled for the European mainland following the revolution in Tunisia.
France criticised Italy when it granted around 20,000 Tunisians temporary residence permits, allowing them to freely travel across Europe to France, where many have relatives.
France then angered Italy, when police stopped a train carrying a number of those migrants at the two countries' border last week.
MEP reaction to the Italy-France reform proposal was swift with UKIP deputy Gerard Batten saying, "This is a clear case of an EU ideal colliding with reality and once again coming off worse, in this case the European borderless state.
"The Italians want to ship the Tunisian immigrants off to France and France will inevitably pass them on to the UK.
"There is a clear abuse by Italy of the 1951 convention which states that asylum seekers must seek refuge in the first designated safe country to arrive in. It is very clear that one size does not fit all - be it on immigration or anything else."
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