The surge of north African migrants into Italy and France will mean Europe will impose internal passport border controls once again to stop the flow of illegal arrivals

The surge of north African migrants into Italy and France will mean Europe will impose internal passport border controls once again to stop the flow of illegal arrivals, if proposals before EU home ministers are approved.

The so-called Arab spring has led to a massive wave of immigration from north-western Africa to the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa following the Tunisian uprising and air strikes in Libya.

Most of the young immigrants arrive in overcrowded fishing boats and have paid traffickers. They are processed on Italian soil and provided with temporary papers before heading north to France in the search of work.

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Italy has granted temporary permits to more than 25,000 Arab migrants in the past couple of months, although the mainly French-speaking Tunisian immigrants generally head to France.

France has closed a railway frontier near the Italian border town of Ventimiglia and imposed extra checks on the papers of all immigrants.

The Italian government has argued for years that the influx is a Europe-wide problem and that measures to discourage the arrivals, and absorb those already in Europe, must be international. The proposals to allow the 25 countries within the passport-free Schengen zone to close their frontiers were unveiled on Wednesday at the European Commission and will be debated at a meeting of EU home affairs ministers next week.

Under the plan, it would be the EU itself that made the decision on whether each situation is classified an ''emergency''. The EU Home Affairs Commissioner, Cecilia Malmstrom, said the moves would be strictly monitored and ''very limited''.

She said the EU could step in to handle situations where either a member state is ''not fulfilling its obligations to control its section of the external border, or where a particular portion of the external border comes under unexpected and heavy pressure due to external events''. Ms Malmstrom said: ''We are seeing exceptional events across the Mediterranean.''

The EU is now also to consider allowing an intensification of surveillance as well as checks at national borders after increasing demands from France and Italy for a review of the Schengen agreement, which does not include Britain.

These calls have been viewed with alarm by many other European states which believe that the free movement of people across borders is a fundamental plank of the common market and political union.

There is also likely to be consternation at the European Commission being the decision-maker on what constitutes exceptional circumstances, as it means Brussels will take control from national capitals.

During the past three years, Mediterranean nations including Italy have attempted to reach agreements with north African nations, including Libya, to discourage the departure of immigrants from their coastlines.

Thousands of sub-Saharan refugees, particularly Nigerians, have been trafficked from the north African coastline to Lampedusa after long road trips. However, the uprisings in North Africa have changed this.

The European Council on Refugees and Exiles argues that Europe cannot encourage democracy in north Africa and then turn its back on people fleeing conflict.

The proposals will be submitted to an emergency meeting of EU interior ministers next Thursday.

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