The European Conservative and Reformist (ECR) party plans to submit a motion in the European Parliament’s plenary on Tuesday, October 3rd, in a bid to open up the Schengen reform proposal for another round of amendments before it goes to interinstitutional negotiations, a member of the ECR told The European Conservative. The motion will likely gather enough support, forcing the plenary to hold another vote on the file on Thursday, giving conservative lawmakers another chance to argue for more effective border protection.
As we reported last month, the left-wing majority in the EP’s civil liberties committee adopted the Schengen reform package and even authorized the parliament to enter into trilogue negotiations with the Council and the Commission—without a subsequent plenary vote—to begin finalizing the file right away.
By limiting the extent of temporary border control measures and imposing further layers of red tape to any meaningful ones, the package explicitly aims to ensure member states reinstate internal borders within the Schengen Area “only as a last resort.”
While the proposal’s socialist rapporteur believes this would be necessary to protect the free movement within the bloc, conservative MEPs of the ECR and ID—the only parties to vote against the file—argued that it “ignores the realities” of the migration crisis and undermines “the sovereignty of member states to control who enters their territory.”
Instead, members of the ECR called for saving Schengen’s freedom of movement by focusing on external border protection—no need for internal checks if illegal entries are stopped at the gates.
One more chance
After opening this week’s plenary session in Strasbourg, EP President Roberta Metsola announced that the committee adopted the final text and has given the Parliament mandate for negotiations. This means parties now have until Tuesday night to contest the committee decision and request a plenary vote.
According to Swedish MEP Charlie Weimers, this is exactly what the ECR is planning to do with the help of the ID. “A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation,” he told us, quoting Reagan. “The EP deplores border control and holds the nation state in contempt. This is highly evident” from the proposed Schengen reform, he added, that is why ECR is going to challenge it.
The medium threshold applies, he explained to The European Conservative, which means 71 MEPs are needed to force a plenary vote on the mandate. The two conservative parties would be more than enough, but even without ID, ECR would only need 5 independents for the motion to pass.
If the motion is successful, the plenary vote will be scheduled for Thursday, when all 705 MEPs can vote on whether to move forward with the current text. If the mandate’s rejected—as the conservatives hope—that would send the proposal back to the drawing board, opening it up for further amendments.
“The proposed [Schengen code] revision needs to be amended to adequately provide flexibility and support in the face of mass migration and hybrid warfare such as the weaponization of migrants, secondary movements, terrorism, and organized crime,” Weimers said.
Put them on the stand
Of course, Weimers stays realistic when it comes to the chances at Thursday’s vote, as nothing is stopping the same leftist majority from replicating its committee decision in the plenary, after all. But amending the legislation is not the only goal here, the MEP noted, but also to facilitate true parliamentary debate and to confront a few key people—specifically, Macron’s Renaissance (RE) party—with their choices before the entire plenary.
Incidentally, France already rejected the idea of limiting member states ability to impose temporary border checks in the Council and it currently has partial measures in place with almost all its neighbors. But apparently, this did not stop MEPs of the RE, members of the liberal Renew group, to vote against the official line from Paris.
“We want to put them [the French liberal MEPs] on the stand,” Weimers told us. “We want to see them argue for something that goes against what their bosses decided.” He added that by triggering this kind of internal debate, the conservative side may be able to muster a few additional supporters for the cause as well as make sure that other MEPs from around Europe will at least consider their national interests instead of just blindly following the Parliament’s mainstream.
Nonetheless, the first step will be to gather 71 MEPs for the motion, the fate of which will be announced on Wednesday morning at the earliest.
