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Most viewed in Foreign affairs
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The Schengen area includes the European Union's member states, minus the UK and Ireland, plus non-EU members Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. In principle, there are no border controls anywhere in the area, although Bulgaria, Cyprus and Romania have not yet fully met the conditions for participation in Schengen.
As a rule, short-stay visas issued by any Schengen country are valid for the entire area. (Visas for more than three months are still subject to national rules and are valid only for the country that issues them.) That means visa bans by an individual member state apply to the entire zone.
Cecilia Malmström, the European commissioner for home affairs, has confirmed that Switzerland acted within its powers when it barred at least 150 Libyan officials from entering the Schengen area, an interpretation that was backed by member states' interior ministers in Brussels last Thursday (25 February). Criticism of the ban by Italy and Malta is political, rather than legal or procedural.
The EU, led by Spain and Germany, has been discreetly mediating between Switzerland and Libya since last week, but diplomats have been tight-lipped in order not to jeopardise the process.
On Tuesday, the European Commission announced that Libya would for the first time receive funding – around €60 million for 2011-13 – under a neighbourhood country programme. Officials said that the move had been planned for a long time and was not connected to the difficulties between countries in the Schengen area and Libya.
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