The European Commission is challenging Belgium’s decision to temporarily patrol the border with France and effectively suspend the passport-free Schengen agreement alleging a surge in arrivals caused by the closure of a refugee camp in Calais.

The EU’s commissioner for migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, sent a letter to Belgium’s Prime Minister Charles Michel and Interior Minister Jan Jambon, outlining the Commission’s doubts. In the letter, the Commission questions the Belgians’ decision to police borders up until March 23 — and potentially longer.

The Belgian government introduced the border checks Wednesday out of fear that great numbers of migrants and refugees will cross the border after France’s decision to dismantle parts of the makeshift refugee camp known as the “Calais Jungle.”

“The reintroduction of internal border control … requires a notification to the Commission and member states before the planned reintroduction,” the migration commissioner wrote, pointing to articles 23 and 24 of the Schengen agreement as a legal basis, according to the newspaper La Libre Belgique.

If Belgium wants to patrol the border immediately as an emergency measure, it can do so for 10 days under article 25 of the Schengen agreement, the commissioner said.

“I invite you to fulfill a notification according to article 25 without delay,” the commissioner wrote. “I invite you to explain the nature of the serious threat … and to provide figures or information demonstrating the necessity and proportionality of this decision.”

The Belgian ministry reacted Sunday. Jambon’s spokesman Olivier Van Raemdonck said the government had “found that a  stream of people is on the move and we have to stop this … A hundred people, two hundred people a day — this is a lot for a small country like Belgium.”

Jambon’s cabinet will discuss the issue with the Commission Monday, though neither the minister nor the commissioner would be able to attend in person. If forced to comply with article 25, the Belgian government will have to cease border controls by the end of next week or substantiate an extension of the measure.

The government sent the European Commission a notification Wednesday in which it argued that the closure of Calais is an extraordinary circumstance. “We followed the procedure for article 23 and 24, but if the Commission argues this falls under a different article, who are we to deny that,” Van Raemdonck said.

France started with the clearance of part of the Calais refugee camp after a French court Thursday upheld the decision to place refugees in housing units and clear out the tents. About 5,500 migrants are estimated to live in the “Calais jungle.”

Belgian officers have since stopped migrants that had fled the Calais camps and entered Belgium, including groups of up to 80 people.

“[The government] opted to put in place stronger border controls, in order to avoid makeshift camps popping up in our coastal region — and Schengen allows for this,” said Sarah Smeyers, member of parliament of Jambon’s N-VA party, in a television debate Sunday.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve described Belgium’s decision Thursday as “strange,” while Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said in an interview published Saturday that Schengen rules “don’t require consultation between prime ministers beforehand.”

Belgium is the seventh country to request the temporary suspension of Schengen rules over the past few months, after Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden and Norway.

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