The director of aeronautical police at Brussels Airport has ordered the easing of border checks during times of high traffic, according to Joery Dehaes, union secretary for ACV Police (CSC Police), who expressed his concerns on Saturday.
Article 9 of the Schengen Borders Code allows for the relaxation of checks at external borders under “exceptional and unforeseen circumstances.”
Since this week, the airport police chief has been urging staff to apply this article “when necessary or even preventively,” as reported by Het Nieuwsblad on Saturday. The article has already been applied once, according to the union representative speaking to Belga.
When this article is enacted, border police conduct only a visual passport check and stamp documents for flights arriving from non-Schengen countries, which include 29 countries such as 25 EU members, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland.
This means passports are not scanned, preventing the identification of flagged individuals, explained Mr Dehaes. He emphasised that officers frequently identify such individuals who attempt to enter the Schengen area.
Dehaes argues that factors like staff shortages, defective software, or a sudden influx of non-Schengen passengers do not meet the criteria for “exceptional and unforeseen circumstances.” While high traffic at Brussels Airport is positive, it should not come at the expense of security, he stressed.
Although the order to ease controls reportedly came from the airport police director, Dehaes stated he did not know if the federal police commissioner or Interior Minister Bernard Quintin were informed. In mid-May, the minister had emphasised the need to address long queues at passport control.
Attempts to contact the federal police and Bernard Quintin’s office on Saturday morning were unsuccessful.
The relaxation of airport checks has caught the attention of the far-right Vlaams Belang party, which announced on Friday that it would question the MR minister on the issue during a parliamentary committee meeting on Wednesday.
