Countries across Europe have been breaking from Schengen with border checks springing up across the EU.
The Schengen area is now dotted with border restrictions as checkpoints and ID screening are implemented by border agencies in response to growing instability and terror threats.
According to an EU report, the new controls have been brought in by governments to combat the risk of ‘infiltration’ by extremists posing as migrants from the Middle East.
The Italian Government for instance has brought in checks along the border with Slovenia citing the Hamas-Israel conflict.
Likewise, Slovenia has declared additional checks on the borders with Hungary and Croatia threats pointing to concerns for “public order and internal security”.
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The tighter border regulations are a far cry from the passport-free travel vision set out by the EU under the Schengen treaty.
Migration expert Alberto-Horst Neidhardt told Mail Online that stricter border measures demonstrated “the fragility of the Schengen zone”.
The Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies analyst noted: “Large numbers of migrants arriving in southern Europe move freely across the continent to countries such as Germany, which saw a sharp rise in asylum applications to a quarter of a million last year.”
The French government meanwhile has brought in checks at all its internal EU borders with the justification that the French public is seeking “decisions in a Europe surrounded by unstable lands”.
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Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said: “To speak of [controlling] immigration is to speak of our sovereignty… deciding ourselves those we want to welcome, and those we want to separate from”.
Croatian leader Plenkovic has also recently championed stricter borders within the bloc
He said: “The EU is surrounded by a series of very big crises… bigger than any time in the past 30 years.
“We have Putin’s aggression against Ukraine, Hamas’s attack on Israel, all this in the context of intensified flows of illegal migration.”
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