EU eyes takeover at key points on border

Officials aim to get a grip on a crisis that is dividing the bloc.

BRUSSELS — European Union authorities Tuesday proposed taking control of border and coastal security at popular entry points for migrants in countries like Greece and Italy, to get a grip on a crisis that has divided the bloc and fed the rise of populist political movements.

Officials at the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, said the centralized approach to border security would shore up confidence that the bloc can manage the migration crisis and would save one of its flagship policies: the Schengen rules that allow the free movement of citizens across most of Europe’s internal borders.

The proposal was expected to be discussed at a summit meeting of the national leaders of the European Union’s 28 member states in Brussels on Thursday.

Like the long effort to save the euro that began six years ago, the migration crisis is mainly focused on pushing one country, in this case Greece, to abide by EU rules in exchange for greater support from other countries, namely Germany, that fear the repercussions of problems on the bloc’s periphery.

Rescuing Greece from a messy departure from the single currency took years of grinding negotiations, and approval for the new border system could get bogged down in similar procedures involving national governments and the European Parliament. That could turn the proposal into an example of Europe’s seeming inability to respond to crises in a coordinated fashion.

The proposals already face opposition in countries like Poland, where some politicians suspect a blunt power grab by Brussels intended to diminish national sovereignty. An initiative pushed this year by the commission to relocate tens of thousands of people from Greece and Italy to other parts of the bloc has failed to gain much traction.

Even so, momentum has been building in France and Germany for the kind of initiative that was announced Tuesday.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany is under severe pres- sure to reduce the number of migrants clamoring for asylum in wealthy northern European countries. Reinforcing the bloc’s external borders is also a priority for France, where two of the participants in terrorist attacks in Paris last month posed as refugees to enter the EU through Greece.

The borders that migrants “cross are not just Greek borders or Bulgarian borders — they are European borders,” Frans Timmermans, the first vice president of the European Commission, said at a news conference in Strasbourg, France. That made such borders a “collective responsibility,” and “if we don’t protect them in the right way, the consequences will be for all Europeans,” he said.

“I call particularly on Eastern European countries to show solidarity with others,” Timmermans added.

Ahead of a two-day summit that begins Thursday, Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, the body that represents European leaders, called on national leaders to “regain control over our external borders to stem migratory flows and to preserve” free movement of citizens inside the bloc.