MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The two ministers wrote in a letter to the Commission that the European Union’s external borders should be protected if the bloc wanted to keep the Schengen visa-free travel zone in place, Frankfurter Allgemeine news outlet reported.
The Commission should allow Frontex deploy its emergency border protection units on its own initiative in emergency situations, the letter said, as quoted by the newspaper.
The European Union, and particularly Germany, has been trying to cope with a large-scale refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants fleeing their home countries in the Middle East and North Africa to escape violence and poverty.
EU border agency Frontex recorded over 1.2 million illegal border crossings into the European Union in the first 10 months of 2015.
