EU agrees on border checks in visa-free area

European Union nations yesterday agreed they can temporarily restore border checks within the visa-free Schengen area in case of a surge of illegal migrants, despite opposition from Brussels.
Officials from Denmark, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, said home affairs ministers from the 27-nation bloc had unanimously agreed to the move.
"Disappointed by lack of European ambition among member states", said the EU's home affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem, who opposed the move.
The agreement will enable the 26 countries in the travel-free Schengen area to restore border controls for up to a year under "exceptional circumstances".
Those circumstances, according to demands made by France and Germany earlier this year, are problems related to illegal immigration, which has emerged as one of Europe's most sensitive political issues amid the debt crisis, slow growth and mounting unemployment.
The EU's Frontex agency that mans borders said in a report that registered illegal crossings on the outer borders of the Schengen area shot up by 35 percent in 2011.
Numbers rose from 104,000 in 2010 to 141,000 the following year, largely due to flows across the Mediterranean from the Arab Spring upheavals.
But the second biggest hot-spot was the border between Greece and Turkey, which saw 55,000 detections last year.
With low-cost flights to Turkey on the increase as war, chaos and poverty send people fleeing hot-spots from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Somalia, the flow is forecast to increase.
Responding to the rise in anti-immigrant sentiment, France and Germany in April sent Schengen counterparts a joint letter calling for drastic change.
Currently, the Schengen treaty allows renewal of border controls in the case of a terror or security threat thrown up by sports or other events.
But the draft approved by the ministers would allow a state within the Schengen area to reimpose border controls for six months, renewable for another six "when the control of an external border is no longer ensured due to exceptional circumstances".