A joint communiqué by France and Italy is expected to be issued by France and Italy today, calling for a review of the Schengen free-movement treaty.

The issue was sparked off by Italy’s decision to grant 25,000 temporary residence permits to predominantly French-speaking Tunisians who had fled their country and made for Lampedusa last week.

Silvio Berlusconi decided to evacuate Lampedusa of all arrivals, and in doing so, granted them temporary residence permits and then hustled them onto trains bound for France. In the meantime, France refused to allow them in, and even stopped trains at the borders and sent people back to Italy.

This is, of course, the same incident which led to Italy’s peculiar and incorrect application of the law in refusing to take in some 200-odd asylum seekers who had been rescued by the AFM just 30 miles off Lampedusa.

Italian Interior Minister Franco Frattini gave an interview on a prominent Italian newspaper on Sunday, saying that since the European Union refused to activate an emergency burden sharing agreement, both countries felt as though they had to put forward amendments to the Schengen Treaty, which are to be activated in extraordinary circumstances.

In his interview, Mr Frattini said that it was inevitable that every treaty, at some point, becomes dated. But, if this communiqué gains the support of member states, it begs the question: Just how shortsighted are European lawmakers?

The Schengen Acquis was incorporated into the EU Treaty in 1997, and emphasis continued to be placed on compliance with the treaty, especially with new member states, Malta, of course, among them.

Many new EU members were pressed into signing and adopting the treaty, implementing it as soon as possible. Malta has seen the arrival of asylum seekers for years, yet the government has never intentionally violated Schengen rules. Granted, a few suspect people might have slipped through the net, and are invariably always sent back to Malta, after trying to leave with false papers.

Then in one fell swoop, Italy, which has tried to sully our reputation in a fit of “it’s not fair” tantrum, completely violated all that Schengen stands for, and purposely allowed (and encouraged, even by paying train tickets), people to cross into France. Italy, will of course say that all was in order, as all people had valid documents. But it is not the point.

The point of Schengen is to allow free movement through open borders once within the EU, after having been checked and vetted by the immigration authorities of the first point of entry to the European Union. One seriously doubts how much could have been checked in Lampedusa, and subsequently mainland Italy, given the lightning speed (completely out of character) with which Italy facilitated immigration. Perhaps it had more to do with Silvio trying to deflect some attention away from his sex and fraud cases in court.

Malta has already sounded the alarm about asylum seekers, but the mechanism was not activated. Yet Italy and France, suddenly concerned about the breach, spark into action quicker than Europe can say “No”. The truth of the matter is that Europe systematically plods along and muddles its way through. The EU as an organ has been constantly described as “a unique experiment”. A unique experiment it most definitely is, and it is also managed by crisis. What a mess – again. The Italo-French immigration issue once again makes a mockery of the structures of Europe. Bailout, anyone?