During a plenary debate in Strasbourg to mark the 40th anniversary of the Schengen Agreement, ECR Group Co-Chairman Nicola Procaccini warned that the freedom to travel across Europe without internal borders — one of the EU's most tangible achievements — is still under threat.

“Without firm action against illegal immigration, without solid external borders, our freedom is at risk”, he said on behalf of his group.

Mr Procaccini viewed the Schengen as a great European achievement and criticised the reintroduction of internal border checks by several governments, viewing this as a consequence of years of weak external border protection and misguided migration policies. He highlighted the hypocrisy of those who once championed open borders but were then closing them internally.

“This approach was nothing short of a betrayal — not only of the Schengen Treaty, but of the very idea of Europe”, Procaccini said.

Mr Procaccini’s full speech reads:

Today we celebrate forty years of a great European achievement. Schengen is the story of a Europe that dismantled its internal borders to guarantee nearly half a billion people the freedom to travel, live, work and grow beyond their national frontiers. We remember the events and the faces of those first cross-border commuters, of families no longer divided by a passport, of small businesses finally able to expand their markets without barriers.

But this freedom is not something we can take for granted. It is the result of a pact between the peoples of Europe — a pact that must be upheld day by day.

Unfortunately, that pact has already been violated on several occasions. In response to legitimate public concern over migratory pressure, some governments have reintroduced border controls and customs checks. Ironically, the first to do so were the very same governments that for years had supported, politically and financially, pro-migration NGOs and the “no borders” ideology.

Southern and Eastern European border states were forced to accept indiscriminate arrivals of migrants, while internal borders were closed to prevent so-called secondary movements across Member States. A hypocritical decision — one that shifted the entire burden of migration onto countries of first entry, triggering a chain reaction of similar measures across half of Europe. I ask you: have we ever seen, in all of history, a political entity open to the outside world but closed within?

This approach was nothing short of a betrayal — not only of the Schengen Treaty, but of the very idea of Europe, politically and culturally.

I hope that this lesson has been learned: without firm action against illegal immigration, without solid external borders, our freedom is at risk. And with it, the very reasons for our being together.