France and Italy proposed a reform of Europe’s open-borders treaty on Tuesday that would allow member states to re-impose internal frontier controls temporarily in case of a major influx of migrants.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi agreed on a letter outlining their demands to EU leaders at a summit in Rome following the arrival of thousands of migrants from Tunisia.
"We both believe that in exceptional circumstances there should be variations to the Schengen treaty," Berlusconi told reporters after the talks.
Sarkozy said: "For the treaty to stay alive, it must be reformed."
A planned reform of Schengen later this year should look at "the possibility of restoring internal border checks temporarily in cases of exceptional difficulty in managing common external borders," the letter said.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive, said it was drawing up "precise conditions" under which states could suspend the rules of the treaty.
Spokesman Olivier Bailly said reinstating border patrols between European Union states that are part of the treaty would be a "last resort".
"You would have to leave the EU to suspend Schengen," he said.
The current rules only allow controls to be re-introduced only when there is a "grave threat to the public order or internal security" of an EU state.
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