Quote:Nicolas Sarkozy entered the political fray ahead of European elections today, describing current EU immigration policies as “an abject failure” and calling for the bloc’s visa-free Schengen area to be rewritten.


Angling for re-election in 2017, the former centre-Right French president called for the creation of a Franco-German economic bloc at the heart of the eurozone, in an opinion piece in Le Point magazine .


With the far-Right Front National polled to pip Mr Sarkozy’s crisis-wracked UMP to the post in Sunday’s EU elections in France, the ex-president said: "Schengen I must be immediately suspended and be replaced by a Schengen II of which member countries can only be a part if they previously agree to the same immigration policy.”


Europe migration policy has failed and the need to replace Schengen I has become obvious, he added, as the current system allows immigrants who enter it to “choose the (European) country with the most generous welfare system”.


"Europe is not meant to organise social and migratory dumping, almost systematically at the expense of France," he warned.