European Union considers renewed border checks

Several EU nations have said that they could isolate Greece by closing off their borders so that incoming refugees would have to remain there.

Dombrovskis said Greece was not identifying or registering people arriving effectively, not uploading fingerprinting data to relevant bases systematically, and not checking travel documents properly and against key databases.

Greece had “seriously neglected” in obligations to uphold Schengen treaty checks along its maritime and land border, which form part of the EU’s external frontier, said Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovski. Dombrovskis acknowledged that Greece had “started undertaking efforts towards rectifying and complying with the Schengen rules” since the report was undertaken in November, but said that “substantial improvements” were needed.

They also issued Athens with a deadline of three months to fix the problem.

Some member states said Athens must deliver on obligations to alleviate the crisis, which has put the passport-free Schengen zone – hailed by many as the greatest achievement of European integration – on the verge of collapse.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a Tuesday statement that more than 45,000 refugees have entered Greece by sea so far this year.

Ioannis Mouzalas told Skai television Wednesday that EU-supervised screening centers being set up on the Greeks islands could be used to send back ineligible migrants on chartered boats to Turkey “the next morning”.

However, the arrival of more than a million people in the past year, many of them refugees, with all the challenges, political and practical, that brings, is straining Europe.

(AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris). An Afghan woman carry her child after they arrived with a Ferry at the Athens’ main port of Piraeus, early Wednesday, Jan 27, 2016.

Under a separate plan backed by the Commission, police from across Europe will be deployed along Greece’s northern border with Macedonia as a “second line of defence” to repel migrants.

If the idea is approved, it will seal off Greece and exclude it from the lifting of the Schengen agreement, which has infuriated the Greek migration minister.

But this is a serious warning to Greece to improve things, says the BBC’s Damian Grammaticas in Brussels.

Mid-May could be when a summer surge of refugees reaching the European Union is starting to peak.

Asselborn, however, remained confident that the open-border principles of the Schengen treaty would survive the crisis.

The verdict of “serious deficiencies” in Greece’s external border opens the door to activating Article 26, an emergency clause that allows border controls to be imposed for two years.

Already six Schengen members have reintroduced controls since a year ago in Germany, Austria, France, Sweden, Denmark and the non-EU member Norway.

Its findings pile further pressure on a country that has been fending off calls that it should face possible suspension from the 26-country Schengen zone, a cherished symbol of European unity.

“The Greeks must suffer the consequences”, said Belgian secretary of state for asylum and migration, Theo Francken.

Denmark on Tuesday passed a controversial law requiring refugees seeking asylum in that country to give up their valuables to help pay for their care.

A note on terminology: The BBC uses the term migrant to refer to all people on the move who have yet to complete the legal process of claiming asylum.