French President Emmanuel Macron gained early backing on Thursday in his quest to reform the EU’s border-free Schengen area.
Germany and the European Commission came out in favour of Mr Macron’s idea of a Schengen Council to manage the zone’s external borders.
Austria and Finland also welcomed his calls to protect those frontiers and speed up a reform process that has been at a stalemate for years.
EU borders are under pressure from migration flows via Belarus, the Middle East and North Africa and crossings of the Mediterranean Sea.
Under fire from the nationalist right ahead of April’s presidential election in France, Mr Macron is trying to use his country’s six-month stint chairing EU meetings to drive forward the stalled reforms.
He pitched the Schengen Council idea to the EU’s 27 home affairs ministers at a meeting in Lille, where he told them there could be no visa-free travel within the bloc without better border control at its perimeter.
The risk of terrorism and uncontrolled migration “calls us to take more radical measures, to take back control of our borders and, through that, control our destiny”, he said.
Ministers were told the proposed council would be similar to the Eurogroup, in which the 19 eurozone countries discuss the management of the single currency.
As an informal steering committee for migration, the Schengen Council would not require changes to European treaties and could hold its first meeting as early as next month, French officials said.
Gerald Darmanin, the French interior minister, said it would allow the bloc to react more promptly to border crises such as the stand-off with Belarus.
Schengen countries also brought in a patchwork of emergency restrictions during the pandemic to stop coronavirus spreading across borders.
“What is perceived by all EU members is sometimes the difficulty of talking to each other, the slowness and the anticipation of the tools that can work when they are mobilised quickly,” Mr Darmanin said.
Ylva Johansson, the EU’s home affairs commissioner, said she “very much welcomed” Mr Macron’s idea of a dedicated Schengen group.
“I think President Macron showed strong leadership, especially in the area of Schengen and migration,” she said.
The EU’s biggest country, Germany, “will be on the side of the French proposal”, said Interior Minister Nancy Faeser.
“We think it is right and important to say that we should work more closely together in the Schengen area,” she said.
But beneath agreement on that point lie sharp differences in the handling of migration, which may prove trickier for France to resolve in its six-month presidency.
Ms Johansson has made no secret of her frustration at the deadlock surrounding a so-called new pact on asylum and migration, which she proposed in 2020.
Although some elements have been agreed, including the establishment of a dedicated EU asylum agency, other aspects such as the sharing out of asylum seekers within the bloc have yet to be agreed.
Nations at the external border are pushing for measures such as border walls and the compulsory relocation of asylum seekers, at which other states balk.
Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner called for an “alliance of common sense” to bring in tougher measures and name-checked Greece, Lithuania and Poland as potential allies.
“We need stronger measures,” he said. “The countries at the external border are under a lot of pressure.”
“The aim must be to have as robust an external border as possible, so that we can have as open a Schengen area as possible.”
He welcomed France’s push for reform, saying Austria was under pressure from almost 40,000 asylum applications filed last year.
Ms Faeser, meanwhile, said Germany favoured setting up legal migration routes into the EU to prevent people drowning in the Mediterranean.
“Germany stands for an open and humane Europe,” she said.
