The EU Commission threatened Austria with legal action over its extended Schengen border controls and launched a formal consultation procedure with all involved EU states.
The dispute over temporary border controls at internal borders is set to escalate with the EU Commission launching a “formal consultation procedure” with all EU states concerned, including Austria, according to a report on the border control-free Schengen area published on Tuesday.
Should this “not lead to a clear commitment to change,” it said it was prepared to take legal action, APA reported.
In the visa-free Schengen area, there are actually no stationary checks on persons at the borders. However, in the course of the refugee crisis in 2015, several countries – including Austria – introduced temporary controls that have to be extended every six months.
Austria insists on maintaining controls at the Slovenian border due to the ongoing “migration pressure”, announcing in April that it will apply to the European Commission to extend border controls for another six months to “put on the asylum brakes and prevent asylum abuse.”
Slovenia has already threatened the country with retaliatory measures and to introduce border controls as well. Ambassador Aleksander Geržina complained that Austrian border controls had now been extended “for the 17th time”. “Slovenia cannot accept this any longer,” he told the Tiroler Tageszeitung.
Commission and Court of Justice call out Austria’s border controls
“The reintroduction of border controls must remain an exception, strictly limited in time and a last resort,” the Commission said in a statement, APA reported. It called for the “gradual abolition” of controls and their “replacement by ‘alternative measures of police cooperation’”.
A high-ranking European Commission official also called out such border requests in late April, adding that the Austrian government’s migration statistics do not reflect reality.
However, the European Court of Justice has already ruled on border controls. In April 2022, the Court ruled that an EU country may introduce border controls in the Schengen area for a maximum of six months in case of a serious threat to its public order or internal security. After that, there must be proof of a new serious threat. Austria does not appear to have proven this since 2017, the ruling states.
At the same time, the Commission called on the EU states to expand the Schengen area to include Bulgaria and Romania. However, Austria and the Netherlands blocked the admission of these two countries last year. Moreover, Austria’s Interior Minister Gerhard Karner rejected in April Romania’s demand for a timeline for when the country would lift its veto.
(Chiara Swaton | EURACTIV.de)
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