From 5 to 18 June, Italy will suspend the rules of the Schengen area, which allows free movement between EU countries. The reason is that the G7 summit will take place in Puglia between 13 and 15 June. It is therefore a security measure to control entry into the national territory.
From Thursday 13th to Saturday 15th June, some of the most powerful people on the planet will meet in Borgo Egnazia in Puglia: the G7 summit will take place, of which this year Italy is president. To guarantee the safety of the event, checks will be carried out at the country’s borders – be they land, air or sea – for approximately two weeks. We will essentially return to a period before the birth of the Schengen area, which since 1995 has allowed free movement between the states of the European Union. Everything will have well-defined deadlines, however: the controls they will start at 2pm on Wednesday 5 June, and will end at 2pm on Tuesday 18 June.
The Ministry of the Interior explained this with a note: “The national land, sea and air borders, as per consolidated practice by States on the occasion of similar events, will be temporarily subject to controls”. On the other hand, the same regulation that regulates the functioning of the Schengen area provides that it is possible to carry out suspensions, provided they are temporary and well-motivated.
Article 25, in fact, states that “in case of serious threat to public order or internal security of a Member State in the area without internal border control, that Member State may exceptionally reintroduce border control in all parts or specific parts of its internal borders” for the time “strictly necessary to respond to the serious threat”. In this case there is no known threat, but the profile of the event leads to precautions. Article 27 of the same regulation establishes exactly how the State concerned must proceed: communicate the methods and timing of the measures to the European Commission well in advance. border controls.
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Looking at precedents, it is common for several European countries that have to host high-level international events to use this measure. However, it is a different case than that of Slovenia: here Italy restarted border controls in October, and since then has renewed the measure several times to avoid the risk of terrorist infiltration, according to what was communicated by the executive.
Concretely, it is not certain that controls on all Italian borders will be tightened for the entire duration of the two weeks announced. Indeed, the most likely forecast is that the alert will be high especially in the days before the G7 (which takes place from 13 to 15 June), as well as of course the days of the event themselves. For the rest of the indicated period, it cannot be ruled out that the controls may be rather light, and not slow down circulation too much.
