Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.
The BBC’s Matthew Price joins migrants travelling from Ventimiglia in Italy to France
The leaders of France and Italy have said Europe’s Schengen open-border treaty should be revised.
The move by President Nicolas Sarkozy and PM Silvio Berlusconi comes after they met to discuss the recent rise in North African migration to Europe.
Italy has angered France by granting visas to thousands of migrants, allowing them to travel across Europe’s border-free Schengen zone.
About 25,000 migrants have arrived in southern Italy so far during 2011.
Many have fled unrest in North Africa and among them are thousands of Tunisians hoping to join relatives in France.
Both Mr Berlusconi and Mr Sarkozy are facing domestic political pressure to curb migration from right-wing parties opposed to large-scale immigration.
Speaking at a news conference in Rome after their meeting, Mr Berlusconi said neither Italy nor France wanted to end Schengen.
“But in exceptional circumstances, we both believe that there should be variations to the Schengen treaty, and we’ve decided to work on that together,” he said.
Mr Berlusconi said the two leaders had jointly written to the European Council asking that the treaty be investigated.
Gavin Hewitt’s Europe
“Start Quote
From the start the Italian government set out to make this a European problem”
End Quote
In addition, he said southern Mediterranean countries should not be left on their own to deal with the problems posed by mass immigration.
France and Italy would also ask the Tunisian government to collaborate with them in dissuading migrants from coming to Europe, Mr Berlusconi said.
Mr Sarkozy said Schengen had to be reformed to help it survive.
“We have the Euro, we have reformed the European economy, we would like to see the same thing done to Schengen,” he said.
The Schengen treaty allows legal residents of most EU countries, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland to travel across the zone with only minimal border checks.
Patrols
Migrants heading to Europe from North Africa often arrive at the Italian island of Lampedusa, which lies about 120km (75 miles) off the Tunisian coast.
The upheavals across the Arab world have triggered a huge wave of migration, and Italy has complained it is being left to cope with the influx alone.
SCHENGEN AGREEMENT
- On 14 June 1985, Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands agreed gradually to abolish checks at shared borders
- This was the Schengen Agreement, named after a village in Luxembourg
- Full convention came into practical effect a decade later, also covering Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece
- Created single external border, harmonised some rules on asylum and visas, enhanced police and judicial co-operation and established shared information database
- Irish Republic and UK co-operate in certain aspects of Schengen but border checks retained
- Austria joined agreement in 1997, followed by Nordic countries in 2000. Nine new EU member states were incorporated in 2007 and Switzerland in 2008
Earlier this month Italy and France agreed to joint sea and air patrols to try to stop African migrants reaching Europe.
France promised to honour the temporary visas Italy has granted the migrants but has said it will turn away those who cannot support themselves financially.
Last week, French police temporarily blocked an Italian train carrying Tunisian migrants from entering France.
The BBC’s Duncan Kennedy, in Rome, says it is a sign of the depth of the tensions created by the migration crisis that they two countries are seeking a revision of the treaty.
Neither country wants to accommodate the North Africa migrants and they both want to ensure the situation is not repeated in the future, say our correspondent, so they are calling on Brussels to resolve the problem.
Taken from:
France-Italy want migrant reform