The Schengen area was created in 1995 and has become a flagship pillar of the European Union, called by the European Commission a “crown jewel of European integration” and “the beating heart of Europe”. Allowing for the free movement of people and goods, there are no border controls between Member States of the Schengen Area, or at least there shouldn’t be.
Although Schengen has been extending regularly since its creation, over recent years border controls have been increasingly reintroduced between several Member States, with the Netherlands being the latest country to reinstate checks its neighbours – Belgium and Germany.
As of 9 December, the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee (RNLM), a branch of the Dutch armed forces, is carrying out checks at road and rail border crossing points from Belgium and Germany into the Netherlands. According to the government, these are necessary to “prevent further disruption to the migration system, as that would lead to dire circumstances and pose an increased threat to public policy”.
In practice, it is not yet clear which of the 840 points of entry into the country will be monitored. Moreover, the RNLM has indicated it will not be hiring extra personnel, but rather use and distribute its existing task force, meaning the checks will not be very extensive.
Some border regions have flagged the potentially massive impact on commuters who frequently live in one country and work in another, flagging how the checks could create long lines at the border.
However, Minister for Asylum and Migration Marjolein Faber has assured the checks will have “as limited an impact” as possible and that they will not be carried out systematically. Cars will not even be asked to slow down when approaching the boarder, instead controls will be implemented “where possible and necessary” and police will single out targeted vehicles that will be asked to pull over in designated areas on the side of the road, thus not impacting the other travellers and minimizing the possibility of forming long queues.
France started a similar move on 1 November, implementing border controls with Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland and Spain, while with Italy they had already been in place since 2015. They are only supposed to last until April 2025, when the results will be evaluated and a decision will be made on whether the extraordinary measure will be extended or not.
Previously, Germany added controls on the border with Austria in 2015. And although Schengen Rules allow for temporary controls to be reintroduced “as a last resort” and “in the event of a serious threat to public policy or internal security”, the prolonged “temporary” measure has brought into question the safety and integrity of the Schengen Area.
In response to Germany’s controls, Austria’s Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg said that, “sadly”, Austria had to implement its own controls on the borders with Hungary and Slovenia, mentioning that the Schengen “system is dysfunctional”.
The snowball effect continued, with Denmark, Norway and Sweden implementing controls at all land borders, while, in Slovenia, checks are in place at the borders with Croatia and Hungary. Meanwhile, the Netherlands is also planning on implementing similar measures from the end of November.
Ironically now, during the Covid-19 pandemic, when travelling within Europe was almost completely brought to a standstill for safety reasons, French President Emmanuel Macron warned that the “death of Schengen”, brought by closing borders, would endanger the “survival of the European Project”.
