France, Italy call for reform

France and Italy issued a joint call yesterday for a reform of the European Union's visa-free treaty yesterday that would allow EU member states to re-impose internal border controls more easily.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi agreed on a letter outlining their demands to EU leaders at a summit in Rome following the arrival of thousands of migrants from Tunisia.
"We both believe that in exceptional circumstances there should be variations to the Schengen treaty," Berlusconi told reporters after the talks.
Sarkozy said: "For the treaty to stay alive, it must be reformed."
First signed in 1985 as a giant step towards European integration, the Schengen treaty opening passport-free travel to 400 million people in 25 nations is in the line of fire as divided EU nations squabble over immigration.
A planned reform of Schengen later this year should look at "the possibility of restoring internal border checks temporarily in cases of exceptional difficulty in managing common external borders," the letter said.
The current rules only allow controls to be re-introduced only when there is a "grave threat to the public order or internal security" of an EU state.