Refugee dispute threatens EU border freedoms

An angry dispute over the "roaming rights" of North African refugees threatens to undermine the 16-year agreement that removed systematic identity checks at continental European Union borders.

The Italian Ambassador to Paris delivered a stiff formal protest yesterday after France closed its rail border with Italy for six hours on Monday.

France and Belgium have already warned that they could restore systematic border controls for travellers from Italy after Rome began to issue temporary "humanitarian" passports to thousands of Tunisian "boat-people".

The documents give the Tunisians, who have crossed the narrow strait to the Italian island of Lampedusa in recent weeks, the apparent right to roam anywhere in the EU.

France and Belgium fear the refugees from the unrest in North Africa will use the documents to settle illegally within the large Tunisian immigrant communities. Germany has also protested.

The issue is likely to dominate what promises to be a bad-tempered Franco-Italian summit in Rome next Tuesday. Italy has been angered by the refusal of France and other EU countries to "share" the burden of an estimated 25,000 Tunisian refuges who have made the short sea-crossing to Italy or Malta.

Under EU migration law, asylum-seekers are supposed to remain in the country in which they first set foot, until they are accepted or expelled.

Rome says the temporary travel documents, decorated with the Italian coat of arms, are legal and justified. France says they are neither.

In a sense, the dispute is a kind of "spaghetti Sangatte", or "Sangatte in reverse". Up to 2002, when the Red Cross camp for asylum-seekers at Sangatte near Calais closed down, Britain complained France was, in effect, facilitating the passage of illegal immigrants across the Channel.

But even at the height of the Sangatte battle France did not issue temporary travel papers which would have let UK-bound migrants cross the Channel legally.

The Franco-Italian dispute has been envenomed by domestic political pressures in both countries.

The Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is allied with the hard-right and anti-immigrant Northern League. As part of a campaign to deflate the resurgence of the far-right National Front, France's President Nicolas Sarkozy has warned of the need to check "uncontrolled migration" from North Africa.

On Monday France prevented all trains from crossing the border from Vintimiglia to Menton for six hours.

A so-called "train of dignity", carrying 100 Tunisian refugees and 300 Italian pro-migration activists from Genoa, was refused entry to France. Italy said the blockade was "illegitimate and in clear violation of general European principles" of free movement.

It was also criticised yesterday by the main French opposition party, the Socialist Party. The President of the EU Council, Herman Van Rompuy, warned against the "exaggeration" of the "dangers of mass migration" from North Africa.

RIGHT TO ROAM

The Schengen Agreement:

In June 1985, five EU countries signed an agreement on a boat at Schengen on the River Moselle to remove systematic passport controls at their borders. The passport-free "Schengen area" now extends to 25 European countries, including non-EU nations Switzerland, Norway and Iceland. The principal hold-outs are Britain and Ireland.

The EU right of free movement:

Goes back to the Treaty of Rome in 1957 and therefore also applies to Britain.

Immigration rights:

Non-EU foreigners with a legal right to live in one EU country have a right to travel to any member state for three months. Asylum seekers must remain in the EU country in which they first set foot. These rules also apply to non-Schengen countries. Schengen lays down a series of rules on so-called Schengen Visas, which apply to short- or long-term stays by non-EU nationals. Italy has issued temporary humanitarian residence documents to asylum seekers from Tunisia. France, Belgium and Germany dispute whether they obey the Schengen criteria.

- Independent