(Finance) – “With the Minister of the Interior Matteo Piantedosi we communicated at European level the Italian Government’s decision to restore border controls between Italy And Slovenia. The suspension of Schengen Treaty on free movement in Europe has become necessary due to the worsening of the situation in the Middle East, the increase in migratory flows along the Balkan route and above all for national security issues, and I take full responsibility for this”. This is what we read in a post released by the Prime Minister, Georgie Melonson its social channels.
President Meloni’s statement came after the statement released by Building Chigi who explained that “the measure will be implemented from October 21st next for a period of 10 days, extendable pursuant to EU Regulation 2016/339. The control methods will be implemented in such a way as to guarantee the proportionality of the measure, adapted to the threat and calibrated to cause the least possible impact on cross-border circulation and freight traffic”. “Further developments of the situation and effectiveness of the measures will be constantly analysed, in the hope for a rapid return to full free movement”, he concluded.
In addition to Italy with Slovenian borders, there are Austria, Germany, Norway, Republic Czech, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden And Francewho have reactivated controls on some of their borders.
The government has decided to resort to procedure extraordinary, aimed at immediately restoring controls. According to the regulation, in this case, the first suspension cannot exceed 10 days while any subsequent extensions can also reach periods of 20 days each, up to a total maximum of two months. Once the maximum deadline has been reached, it is possible to activate the ordinary procedure, extending the Schengen suspension by a further four months, up to a total of six months.
European countries have already suspended theSchengen Agreement 387 times in various years. Italy, for example, made use of it on the occasion of the G8 in L’Aquila (2009), the G7 in Taormina (2017) and the G20 in Rome (2021).