European Commission
Malmström

With the Swedish Minister Beatrice Ask and the Norwegian Minister Knut Storberget.

A long session of the Justice and Home Affairs Council has just finished. Unfortunately, the Polish Presidency did not manage to find a consensus among the Ministers regarding Bulgaria’s and Romania’s Schengen entry. Two Member States, Finland and the Netherlands, were against the enlargement of Schengen, and since the decision requires unanimity, no agreement could be made. We also had a long discussion on my proposals to strengthen Schengen. Even before our first discussion on this topic today, some harsh statements regarding the proposals had already been made by certain countries. The discussions were nevrtheless quite constructive. Some member countries do not support all of my my suggestions, while others are prepared to take everything on board. Some misunderstandings were sorted out and we all agreed on the necessity of strengthening the evaluation of Schengen and that any decision to introduce border controls for a longer-term must be taken jointly. It is very important that individual member states are not given the possibility to reintroduce border controls for internal reasons without involving the rest of the EU in such decisions. I do believe that we will find a good solution in the upcoming negotiations.

Unfortunately we did not encounter the same constructive spirit when we discussed the asylum package. Together with the Polish presidency, I have tried to find a way forward and break the deadlock on the Dublin Convention. It is a central piece of the whole asylum package. If we are to achieve our goal of establishing a common euroepan asylum system by next year, everyone must show a willingness to compromise. Some Member States did not seem ready to advance further with the discussions. I of course regret this but I am not giving up. We had invited the Norwegian Justice Minister Knut Storberget for a lunch discussion to discuss the horrible events which took place in Norway on 22 July and our work to prevent violent extremism. I presented the new Radicalization Awareness Network that was launched two weeks ago and we had a very constructive discussion about these issues. More information is available on my website.