Italy Temporarily Suspends Schengen Treaty

The Italian government has suspended the Schengen Treaty for several weeks, June 28 to July 15, 2009, in order to restore border control and increase security for the upcoming G8 Summit, which will be held July 8-10 in L'Aquila.

According to the G8 website:

“European citizens in the Schengen area, who have been able to move around freely in those countries party to the Treaty since the early nineties, will once again be subject to border controls before being allowed to enter Italy. A similar measure was adopted back in 2001 when the G8 summit was held in Genoa. Italian citizens, too, will be required to take their passport or some other form of ID with passport status with them when travelling abroad, in order to comply with the regulations in force in their country of destination.

The Schengen agreement expressly allows any individual member country in the area (whose members are Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and three non-EU countries: Iceland, Norway and Switzerland) to suspend the free circulation of citizens when special events are due to be held. The suspension must comply with a set of very specific rules, and in every instance it can be enforced for a limited period of time only.”