Germany and Austria ramped up the pressure on Greece to do more to protect Europe’s external borders, warning that it could be excluded from the Schengen area of passport-free travel.
At a meeting of EU interior ministers in Amsterdam on Monday, Germany’s Thomas de Maizière said the EU must make sure Greece “does its homework” on measures to improve border security. De Maizière said he wanted to keep Schengen intact “but time is running out.”
Austria took an even tougher line, with Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner warning that if measures to protect the Greek-Turkish border do not succeed, then the border could be moved away from Greece and closer to Central Europe — a reference to Greece being kicked out of the Schengen zone.
At the weekend, Mikl-Leitner also spoke of a possible Greek expulsion from Schengen, telling Germany’s Die Welt that if Athens does not take care of its obligations, “we will have to openly discuss the temporary exclusion of Greece from Schengen.”
It is “a myth” that the Greek-Turkish border is impossible to protect, she said, pointing out that Greece has one of the “biggest navies in Europe.”
Sweden’s interior minister, Anders Ygeman, joined in Monday, saying that “if a country fails to meet its obligations, we have to limit its links to the Schengen area.”
However, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier criticized such threats, saying “pretend solutions” would “not help anyone to move forward” in the crisis. Steinmeier is a member of the Social Democrats, coalition partners of Angela Merkel and de Maizière’s Christian Democrats.
At the weekend, Dimitris Avramopoulos, the European migration commissioner, told Greek broadcaster Mega TV “there is no such plan” to kick Greece out of Schengen.
At the talks in Amsterdam, ministers are also discussing the extension of national border controls, which were reintroduced by several EU member countries, including Germany, Sweden and Austria. The latter also set a cap on the number of refugees it will allow in, cutting the number to 37,500 this year — a big cut from the 90,000 who entered the country in 2015.
Mikl-Leitner defended her government’s decision to impose a refugee cap. “The limit will continue,” she said, “because our resources also have limits.”