At the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Schengen Treaty as well as Luxembourg presidency of the EU Council, the EMN National Contact Point for Luxembourg organised on 7 October 2015 the EMN Annual Conference titled 30 years of Schengen Agreement – The Future of Schengen: Challenges and Opportunities. The conference aimed to discuss the developments and the perspectives of Schengen regarding border management and irregular migration as well as to deliver the ideas to feed future policy debates at international, EU and national level. Among speakers of the conference were representatives of EU Member States’ ministries, European Commission, FRONTEX, European Parliament, European universities and international organisations. It was attended by 180 participants coming from different background.
The history of Schengen was briefly described by Charles Elsen, former Director of the Directorate-General of Justice and Home Affairs of the EU Council. The signing of Schengen brought about significant changes including for example uniformity of controls at the external borders; common visa policy; improvement of police cooperation as well as legal and judicial cooperation. The first phase of Schengen was thus focused on its implementation, with a Schengen implementing agreement signed in 1990. The second phase of Schengen focused on expansion in which the five Member States played a pioneering role. To date, 26 countries are Schengen members including also non-EU States. Over time, the system itself has also evolved significantly (e.g. establishment of FRONTEX, EURODAC, SIS II etc.). It now accounts for 8 000 kilometres of external borders, 644 airports, 15 million visas issued every year, and 3 million internal Schengen border crossings every day.
Fabrice Leggeri, the representative of FRONTEX provided a statistical overview of the recent developments. At the end of September 2015 there had been more than 710 000 irregular border crossings, of which more than half (320 000) had occurred in Greece. In the second half of September, Hungary registered 200 000 irregular border crossings while in Croatia 100 000 crossings occurred. It was emphasised that no individual Member State or other country can cope with such challenges alone. Solidarity is therefore required to reinforce the capacity of external border Member States in registering and screening all migrants. As part of the EU measures to counter the challenges, FRONTEX’s budget has significantly increased (from 95 million euro at the beginning of 2015 to expectedly 240 million euro in 2016) including its human resources. Operation Triton (with a budget of 28 million euro) was launched in the Central and Eastern Mediterranean hosted by Italy. It has up to 18 patrolling boats, six aerial and 100 FRONTEX officers to support Italy with border control, registration, screening etc. In Greece, FRONTEX deployed the Poseidon sea operation with a budget of 18 million euro in 2015. Moreover, to effectively implement the “hotspot” concept, FRONTEX launched its biggest call so far and requested the deployment of 775 border guards from Member States.
The first panel was launched by the speech of Laurent Muschel, Director of the Migration and Protection of the Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs of the European Commission, who emphasized that the full implementation of the Schengen acquis is fundamental in order to ensure a proper external border management. The high number of irregular external border crossings is not a failure of Schengen, nor a problem questioning the freedom of movement within internal borders. The migratory pressure is due to external causes and therefore it is not a reason to limit the freedom of movement and to justify the reintroduction of internal border controls. In order to properly address the current migration crisis, the Member States should cooperate to enhance the control of external borders with the support of FRONTEX, regain mutual trust through the deployment of resources to FRONTEX, ensure fingerprinting at external borders to avoid irregular secondary movement, establish effective Dublin system as well as more effective EU return policy.
Representative of the Central Directorate of the French Border Police, Bernard Stiffert, pointed out the importance of strengthening of the EU relations with countries of origin and transit which would facilitate readmission of irregularly staying third country nationals. Laissez-passer should be systematically used were third country authorities are not able to provide travel documents for return and readmission.
Catherine Wihtol de Wenden from the University Science Po in France dealt with the ratio between regular and irregular migration and suggested that the current high migration flows reflects to some extent the limited opportunities for legal migration to Europe. According to her, creating more opportunities for legal migration would likely reduce irregular migration and prevent the “overuse” of international protection statuses for legal stay.
Laurent Muschel opened also the second panel where he introduced measures taken by the European Commission in order to accomplish the priorities set in the 2015-2020 Action Plan against Migrant Smuggling, namely identification of suspicious vessels transporting migrants, financial investigation to tackle money laundering and the confiscation of assets and close cooperation of Member States with internet companies commonly used by smugglers. Moreover, by the end of 2015, immigration liaison officers will be deployed in key transit countries and countries of origin of irregular migrants. He also highlighted that for the Return Directive to be successfully implemented, Member States should focus on their cooperation with third-countries.
The current situation of the high irregular migration flows was also analysed by Eugenio Ambrosi, Director of the IOM Regional Office for the European Economic Area, the EU and NATO who repeated that it mirrors gaps in present mechanisms and policies. In the context of the migrant smuggling, he underlined that there is a need to focus on the reasons and motivations behind smuggling because as long as there is a demand for this illegal labour, the phenomenon will continue.
In the concluding panel, the ministers of the key resorts in Luxembourg together with the Minister of Interior of Slovenia and the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, Migration and Citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos, discussed the importance of cooperation among the Member States and the cooperation with third countries as well as the support provided by the EC. The Commissioner also informed the audience about the new Border Package to be introduced by the end of 2015.
Elaborated from the Conference Conclusions and Summary prepared by the EMN National Contact Point for Luxembourg with the support of the European Commission and the EMN Service Provider (ICFI).