Not three weeks ago we were recording the mess the French and Italians had got themselves into over North African immigrants. But the situation took another lurch into the abyss yesterday when Italy and France jointly asked the EU Commission to have a look at the Schengen agreement. Berlusconi and Sarkozy want reforms which permit temporary cessation of rights to deal with "exceptional" situations like the flood of Tunisian immigrants.

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Oh deary me.

1936/7-ish comes to mind for some reason.....Not quite there yet but we can see the writing on the wall from this distance.....

Better start tooling up....

Looks to me like "kick it into the long grass until the domestic pressure is off."
And if that doesn't work, shrug shoulders, wring hands and blame the Commission.

Learning from Cameron?

Never a shot fired in anger?

Are Both sides running away?

Must be, the Vichy versus the Italians.

Blaming the commission is a step forward, for years they have shielded the commisssion from all responsibility and pretended the EU is working well and governements are making independent decisions. They usually try to get away with blaming previous National administrations and not mentioning that that previous admin was only following instructions from Brussels.

The Euro is breaking down, now freedom of movement within the EU is becoming unworkable. If the structure is flexible the cracks can be absorbed, but when structures are rigid, like the EU institutions are, the cracks become very serious weaknesses that will go on spreading and can go snap at any moment.

O/T but referring to a previous topic.

Richard, have you seen this about John Hemmings' action on the Vicky Haigh case?

http://johnhemming.blogspot.com/2011/04 ... -done.html

Which can be paraphrased as 'we don't know what we are doing but we are desperate to preserve what we have done - even though we have clearly made an almighty mess of things, and we aren't big enough to admit that we were mistaken'.

And while the lumbering bureaucratic machine grinds it's way slowly towards another ultimately unworkable compromise 'The Police' in the threatened nations will work assiduously to ensure that the populations of those nations are prevented from sorting things out for themselves, or at least they'll try to.

I would question why both nations want to reform Schengen. Italy just needs to stop doling out visas to illegal immigrants and send them back at the cost of the carrier that brought them and France should go through the proper procedures for reinstating border controls.(whatever they are, Portugal did it for Euro 2004)

There is no need to reform it but national politics is driving transnational politics. The British Government's usual disinterest in protecting the national interest does not bode well against Sarkozy seeking re-election and Berlusconi being miffed at having to deal with so many immigrants.

O/T but quite interesting.

http://www.4liberty.org.uk/2011/04/26/t ... -children/

What amazes me is the fact that they haven't done a Lenin on us yet!

Lenin? He and his mates were sent across Germany in a sealed train, together with $5 million in gold, so they could take over the Russians and get them out of the war.

Sarkozy and Bunga-bunga Berlusconi could arrange for all the 'asylum-seekers' and 'refugees (ha ha) to be placed on through trains which end at; Oooops, Calais!