The fall of the Iron Curtain was still four years away when, in June 1985, five European countries met in the small Luxembourg town of Schengen for a landmark and far-sighted agreement.
A decade later, as Europe’s post-war scars began to heal, the European Union made the dream of frontier-free travel into a reality. But even as the so-called Schengen Area expands to include Romania and Bulgaria, founding members are shrinking its freedoms in response to public anxiety and populist pressure. On Monday, the Netherlands became the 11th member of the 25-nation club to introduce checks on its borders.
The Schengen Agreement was never intended as a pan-European free-for-all. Its border-free regime has always allowed for police to carry out visual and spot-checks of cross-border traffic. Member states have always been allowed to introduce temporary controls for specific reasons.
These latter measures are meant to be a last resort, however, lasting no more than six months, and must be filed with the European Commission in Brussels.
Yet it is a decade since “temporary” checks were imposed by Germany on its border with Austria during the refugee crisis. Renewed every six months since, Berlin announced further “temporary” police checks in October 2023 on the Czech, Polish and Swiss borders. Mid-September saw Berlin extend controls to all its borders.
Even light checks – on a permanent basis – are not in the spirit of Schengen, particularly when drivers have to explain their movements to police with a machine gun in their eye-line.
A decade of debate over shared migration and asylum challenges has hurt intransigent national governments less than the European Union, viewed by many capitals less as a bringer of shared solutions than as a prolonger of problems.
With populist parties shaping the narrative, Europe’s risky game of border dominoes may topple the historic achievement of Schengen – and the hard-won common asylum and migration regime – before it even comes fully into effect.