EU considers border checks
Cameron may accept temporary measure in place of controversial ban, Czech PM hints
PASSPORT-FREE travel in Europe could be suspended for two years under emergency measures as leaders warned the migrant crisis could destroy the European Union.
Theresa May, the Home Secretary, will join her counterparts at a summit in Amsterdam on Monday to discuss a crisis plan to reintroduce internal border controls in the Schengen zone.
Six countries have so far introduced border checks in an attempt to halt the flow of migrants and about 2.6 million more people are forecast to arrive in the next two years.
Manuel Valls, the French prime minister, warned that the “very idea of Europe” was now in “very grave danger” unless the inflow was stemmed.
He said the EU must tell migrants “with the greatest of firmness” that they are not all welcome.
Mr Valls issued his warning as David Cameron indicated he was ready to drop his central demand of a four-year ban on EU migrants claiming in-work
DAVID CAMERON is on course to abandon plans to stop migrants claiming benefits in the UK for four years in an attempt to persuade hostile EU leaders to back his renegotiation package.
The Prime Minister may instead back plans for a temporary “emergency brake” on migrant benefits.
Bohuslav Sobotka, the Czech prime minister, told a press conference in Prague yesterday that the two men had discussed an emergency brake option. He suggested he would firmly oppose Mr Cameron’s bid to stop migrants claiming in-work benefits for four years because it is “discriminatory”.
The emergency brake would allow Britain to temporarily stop giving new migrants benefits if it can prove to Brussels the number entering the country is straining public services.
Mr Cameron’s four-year benefits pledge is considered the centrepiece of his renegotiation with Brussels and he will face criticism from Eurosceptics for any compromise. The emergency brake will also require agreement from Brussels bureaucrats opposed to any attempts to curb benefits.
Mr Cameron insisted his original proposal “remains on the table”.
Mr Sobotka said: “We discussed possible alternatives to meet the same objective, ie make it possible for the UK government to respond to the mass influx of workers. This option involves giving a member state the possibility of an emergency brake.” He added: “It is very important for us that any solution that is adopted on a European level does not discriminate.”
Mr Cameron said: “I’ve said all along my four-year proposal remains on the table, but if people can find other ways of achieving a similarly powerful effect to address the problem, as the prime minister put it, that the British have put on the table then I’m very happy for those options to be discussed.”
Steve Baker MP, who leads out-campaign group Conservatives for Britain, warned that the emergency brake plan did not go far enough. He said: “The British people want their government to control numbers, not shut the gate when the horse has already bolted.”
It came as 20 MPs signed up to a Conservative campaign led by Nick Herbert, a former minister, to keep Britain in a reformed EU.
In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, the MPs, who include former ministers Sir Eric Pickles, Sir Simon Burns and Dominic Grieve, said they were writing “as founding supporters of Conservatives for Reform in Europe, which gives a voice to Conservatives who want the Prime Minister’s renegotiation to succeed, and if it does, we believe it would be in Britain’s national interest to re- main in a reformed EU”. It has emerged nearly all of the 74 Tory MPs elected last year are to sign a separate letter warning older Conservatives not to let the EU debate lead to infighting of the kind that split the party in the Nineties.
Donald Trump is contributing to extremism by creating a “clash of civilisations between Islam and the West” with his comments about Muslims, Mr Cameron has said. The Republican presidential front-runner’s comments made “the work we need to do to defeat the extremists more difficult”, he said.