Commission denies free pass to Germany and Austria on border controls

Draft decision on Schengen sets conditions on how countries can impose checks.

The European Commission plans to let EU countries impose internal border checks for another six months — including during the summer tourist season — before insisting on a return to free travel in the Schengen zone, according to officials.

In a decision due to be published Wednesday, the Commission will recommend allowing the internal border checks in five countries until November, but Brussels will require oversight of the controls that Germany and Austria, among others, are pushing for. “The decision for Wednesday is made,” said an EU official familiar with the plans.

According to a draft of the decision, seen by POLITICO, the Commission recommends allowing “Austria,  Germany,  Denmark,  Sweden and Norway to  maintain proportionate temporary border controls for a maximum period of six months, starting from the day of the adoption of this Implementing Decision” at their respective shared borders.

Those countries won’t need another invitation to keep the controls in place. German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière told reporters in Berlin Saturday that along with the governments of France, Belgium, Austria, Sweden and Denmark, Germany would push for the “activation of the crisis mechanism foreseen in the Schengen Borders Code.”

Even as it allows the border controls, the Commission’s “roadmap” foresees a return to a fully functional Schengen system by the end of the year.

But the Commission doesn’t give the five countries too much leeway in the controls, saying they should be monitored regularly. “Border control should be targeted and limited in scope, frequency, location and time, to what is strictly necessary to respond to the serious threat and to safeguard public policy and internal security,” the draft says.

Brussels wants oversight and a phasing out once the pressure diminishes: The countries “should regularly review the necessity, frequency, location and time of controls, adjust the controls to the level of the threat addressed, phasing them out wherever appropriate, and report to the Commission every two months,” the draft recommendation reads.

The controls are also limited to the checkpoints where they already are in place: The decision would not allow Austria to introduce new controls at the Brenner pass, one of its borders with Italy, but only at “the Austrian-Hungarian land border and Austrian-Slovenian land border,” according to the draft.

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