Influx of refugees from North Africa prompts European countries to clamp down on borders

I find it really funny that both the French and Italian governments are blaming the 'far right' for the anti-immigration stance of their citizens. When are they going to wake up and recognise that people are fed up with the immigration wave - especially from third-world and Muslim countries - and that the only people standing up to the onslaught are nationalist parties? It's very convenient to blame the 'far-right' for ignoring what their citizens have been saying for years. They are fed up of having their culture and way of life impacted on by a bunch of backward cultures who refuse to integrate. How many more people do they want to accept before there is civil war? To top it all, both France and Italy are now going to be 'assisting' the Libyan rebels with military 'advice' so that they can get rid of Gaddafi. Just what do these countries think will happen when an all-out war breaks out in Libya? It couldn't possibly mean that many more 'refugees' will be boating over to Europe now could it? This is a fine pickle and being 'humane' about it is just not going to work.

Italian coast guard Guardia Costiera rescuing refugees in the canal of Sicily. 760 people were aboard a 20-metre boat arriving from Libya.

THE DREAM of a borderless Europe - in which passport control has been abolished across the Continent over the past 25 years - is in tatters amid a row over North African refugees.

Document checks are being hastily reintroduced in France, the Netherlands and Belgium in response to Italy's decision to hand travel papers to at least 22,000 Tunisian migrants, allowing them access to the mainland of Europe. Austria and Germany also indicated that they would toughen up border checks amid the dispute that threatens to undo a quarter of a century of painstaking efforts to create a passport-free area from the English Channel to the Aegean sea.

Freedom of movement has been a cornerstone of a more united Europe and it has come as no surprise to many commentators that the cracks have started to show as nationalist parties gain momentum across the Continent.

"Goodbye to Schengen?" asked the Spanish newspaper El Pais in lament for the border-free project named after a town on Luxembourg's border with France and Germany and regarded by many as one of Europe's finest post-war achievements.
The Schengen Agreement - signed in 1985 - allows travellers to move freely between 25 countries by showing a passport once upon entry. Non-EU members Norway and Switzerland joined but Britain and Ireland remained outside.

Just as the single currency is battling to survive Europe's economic crisis the single travel area is buckling under the weight of an immigration emergency triggered by the North African revolutions and the hardening of attitudes towards migrants.

The dispute erupted when Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, flew into a rage at fellow EU nations' refusal to take a share of refugees pouring into the Italian island of Lampedusa from Tunisia.

Germany said that it had accepted many more people when Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe and other countries such as Sweden have taken thousands of Iranian refugees.

Italy, knowing that many of the French-speaking Tunisians were seeking a better life in France, began to hand out temporary residence permits, which give Schengen travel rights.

On Sunday France halted train crossings from the Italian town of Ventimiglia to block groups of Tunisians. Christian Estrosi, Mayor of Nice, whose city is on the front line of the influx, said: "It is a little easy for Italy to be generous with the territory of the other EU members. "By authorising these passes Italy, in the name of the EU, has made an incredible offer of hope [to North African immigrants]."

On Monday the Italian Foreign Minister, Franco Frattini, hit back, saying that Paris had broken the spirit of Schengen. "If the situation persists we would save time by just saying that we are changing our minds about free circulation, which is one of the fundamental principles of the European Union," he said.

Roberto Maroni, the Minister for the Interior and a Northern League politician, is supporting a boycott of French goods and Mr Berlusconi has gone so far as to suggest that Italy might be better off leaving the EU.

President Sarkozy of France and Mr Berlusconi are to meet on Tuesday. Both leaders face pressure from a rise of the far Right. The Government in Rome is trying to appease the xenophobic Northern League and Mr Sarkozy's re-election in 2012 is under threat from the Front National.

"There is a rise of parties of the hard Right in Europe which have set their faces against the free movement of people and the Schengen area," said Hugo Brady of the Centre for European Reform.

"There is a conflict coming between the democratic desire to put a 'closed' sign on the door when times are tough and a system which does not follow the demands of the democratic cycle."

The European Commission has backed France, saying that Schengen rules allow for extra checks in the interest of national security.

Britain is staying out of an argument that threatens to engulf the next EUsummit in June. "Thank God we didn't join Schengen," one British diplomat said.

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