BELGIUM : BELGIUM PROTESTS AT FRANCE'S REFUSAL TO ALLOW BELGIAN POLICE ENTRY INTO FRANCE TO PURSUE CRIMINALS

Record ID: 649443

  • Title: BELGIUM : BELGIUM PROTESTS AT FRANCE'S REFUSAL TO ALLOW BELGIAN POLICE ENTRY INTO FRANCE TO PURSUE CRIMINALS
  • Date: 21st April 1995
  • Summary: MENEN, ON BELGIAN-FRENCH BORDER (APRIL 21, 1995) (REUTERS) SV CARS CROSSING ONTO FRENCH TERRITORY 0.04 SV FRENCH AND BELGIAN FLAGS 0.08 SV FRENCH BORDER POLICEMAN STOPPING CAR AND CHECKING DRIVER'S DOCUMENTATION 0.30 YPRES BELGIUM (APRIL 21, 1995) (REUTERS) SV PRESS CONFERENCE 0.38 SV BELGIAN INTERIOR MINISTER JOHAN VANDE LANOTTE SAYING HE HAS COMPLAINED TO FRANCE ABOUT ITS DECISION (FRENCH) 0.59 SV CAMERA OPERATORS 1.01 SCU VANDE LANOTTE SAYING HE FEELS BETRAYED BY THE FRENCH (ENGLISH) 1.28 BRUSSELS, BELGIUM (APRIL 21, 1995) (REUTERS SCU BELGIAN MINISTER FOR EUROPEAN AFFAIRS AND HEAD OF SCHENGEN SECRETARIAT ROBERT URBAIN SPEAKING (ENGLISH) 2.00 SEQUENCE 8 transcript: URBAIN :"THEY'VE PROBABLY FORGOTTEN OR DIDN'T REALISE THAT WHEN THEY SIGNED THEY WOULD HAVE TO MODIFY SOME LAWS ON FRENCH REPUBLIC AND OF COURSE THEY ARE ACTUALLY NOT IN THE POSITION TO FULLY RESPECT THEIR AGREEMENT . THE SCHENGEN AGREEMENT" MENEN, ON BELGIAN-FRENCH BORDER, BELGIUM (APRIL 21, 1995) (REUTERS) SV VARIOUS OF CARS CROSSING ONTO FRENCH TERRITORY 2.11
  • Embargoed: 6th May 1995 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: MENEN, YPRES AND BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
  • Country: Belgium
  • Topics: Crime,General,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAA6YL1BY7EBWBJ584LGJOXNJ53
  • Story Text: Belgium formally protested to France on Friday (April 21) after its police were refused entry into France to pursue suspected criminals.
    Interior Minister Johan Vande Lanotte told a news conference he was sending a letter to his French counterpart Charles Pasqua to protest at France's unilateral violation of a European open-border convention.
    He also said Belgium had suspended a 1964 agreement allowing French customs officials to enter Belgium and question suspected French drug smugglers.
    "I hope that Pasqua will change his mind as soon as possible," Vande Lanotte said at a news conference in Ypres, where France and Belgium signed a police cooperation agreement in March.
    The issue will be discussed at a ministerial meeting on April 28 in Brussels under the Schengen agreement, he added.
    France acknowledged on Friday that it had barred Belgian and German police from pursuing suspected offenders onto its soil under the agreement and said French law must be changed first.
    Belgium is angry that France is apparently going back on earlier promises. Vande Lanotte cited a couple of French government statements, one from 1990, that allowed Belgian police to pursue suspected offenders on French territory.
    Belgian European Affairs Minister Robert Urbain, who currently heads the secretariat overseeing the Schengen accord, said that the French were not in a constitutional position to fully honour their commitments - referring to a lower court decision by a French judge prohibiting foreign police on French soil.
    "They (the French) had probably forgotten, or did not realise when they signed the accord that they would have to modify some French laws," he said.
    A French Interior Ministry official said the convention abolishing frontier controls among seven European Union states, which took effect on March 26, was still in a three-month trial phase and the government was studying its impact.
    Pasqua told Reuters in an interview last week that the right of hot pursuit for foreign police would require a change in French legislation, which should be adopted by the end of 1995.
    "But we will never accept the direct intervention of foreign policemen on our soil without being accompanied by French police," he said.
    A recent study by Belgian criminologist Brice De Ruyver said there had been a wave of thefts blamed on French criminals in the West Flanders region of Belgium since the mid-1980s.
    High unemployment in towns in northern France, including Lille, Tourcoing and Roubaix, drove French youngsters into the relatively prosperous West Flanders region, it said.
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