Italy and Spain Extend Tit-for-Tat Border Checks

Italy said on Tuesday it had extended for another 15 days its border checks on travellers from Spain, and Madrid responded in kind, according to The Local Italy. The measures sit inside a wider European argument about internal frontiers that has been running for months.

The two governments have kept the dispute narrowly framed as a matter of migration management rather than a breach of the Schengen principle of free movement, but the effect is the same at the crossing: documents checked, queues lengthened, and a precedent set for other member states to follow.

The extension lands as nine EU countries have already pressed for more time to implement the bloc's new Entry/Exit System, a delay the Guardian has reported in detail. Read together, the two stories describe a Schengen area in which controls are becoming the norm rather than the exception.