Do Germany’s New Border Checks Signal the End of Schengen?

Zain Ali | 11 September 2024

The EU’s biggest economy has undermined the Schengen Area’s basic tenets. But it’s still too soon to write off the world’s largest visa-free travel area.

This week, the EU’s most populous country dealt a hammer blow to one of the Union’s foundational principles – the free movement across internal borders enshrined in the Schengen Area.

On Monday, Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Fraeser announced six months of temporary controls at its land borders with Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Denmark. This move builds on the stricter controls already present at Germany’s borders with Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Austria and Poland. As a result, all of Germany’s frontiers are now subject to checks.

Why Germany has tightened its borders

The government’s given rationale for this move is to ‘further restrict irregular immigration and…Islamist terror and serious crime’. The catalyst for this move is August’s terror attack in Solingen, in which three people were fatally stabbed by a Syrian man, suspected to be a member of ISIS, whose asylum application had previously been rejected.

The decision could also be read as a political response to the rise of the right-wing AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) party, which surged in recent state elections.

Why this strikes at the heart of Schengen

On the surface, Germany’s decision looks like a catastrophe for the integrity of the Schengen Area.

Schengen is the key mechanism that enables the EU’s freedom of movement. Its purpose is to grant hundreds of millions of people the right to travel unchecked across Europe’s borders. If the continent’s most populous country is now wavering from that principle, could Schengen be destined for a death by a thousand cuts?

Let’s look at the case for the prosecution.

Sowing discord

Germany’s actions have elicited a mixed reaction from its neighbours. The Dutch government has sympathised with Germany’s security dilemma while expressing worries about the move’s impact on cross-border commuters. Austria has responded more sharply, warning Germany that it will not accept any migrants turned away at the border, where similar controls have been in place since 2015.

Such disunity among Europe’s core nations does not augur well for maintaining an enterprise like Schengen. Multilateral agreements that lose their sense of purpose are unlikely to prosper.

A domino effect?

The Czech Interior Ministry has warned that Germany’s decision might lead to a ‘domino effect’ of more and more Schengen states instituting their own border checks until the free travel area exists in name only.

While it is too early to tell if this latest act will set off a chain reaction, there is a recent historical precedent. In September 2015, Germany responded to a wave of migration by re-establishing checks at its land border with Austria. Austria then did the same at its other borders to avoid becoming a cul de sac for migrants, followed by Slovenia, Hungary, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and France.

Several of these states have continued to re-extend controls, with Austria’s border with Germany subject to checks for almost a decade now. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, there’s nothing so permanent as a temporary border control measure.

Economic damage

While Schengen is partly a moral project, it is also an economic one. Frictionless cross-border movement is a key part of Europe’s business model. It has been estimated that border controls, if they became de facto permanent, would decrease trade by 10% to 20%. This would knock half a percentage point off the French economy alone and lose up to €100 billion across the block.

In a scenario of sedimented ‘temporary’ border controls, Schengen would lose one of its key sources of legitimacy: greater prosperity. If it stops delivering this benefit, it will become easier for politicians of the right to advocate scrapping European freedom of movement.

Why there’s still hope for Schengen

Germany’s border controls suggest the skies are darkening for the post-Maastrict model of unrestricted intra-European mobility. But we should be careful not to overdo the narrative.

Here are a few reasons why this new development isn’t a harbinger of doom for Schengen.

The letter of the law remains intact

Germany’s border checks may go against the spirit of Schengen. But they do not violate any of its actual rules.

The Schengen Borders Code allows member states to temporarily impose border controls in the case of a serious threat to public safety. In Germany’s case, the immediate backdrop of violent terrorism meets this threshold.

The long-term risk to Schengen comes in these measures being allowed to run and run. But the free trade area’s rulebook is already flexible enough to withstand moments of crisis.

The precedent

Those prophesying the end of Schengen should remember that we’ve been here before. As we’ve covered, the 2015 migrant crisis saw several states slap controls at their borders. Since then, many of them have been rolled back.

Schengen’s resilience and elasticity is formidable. As we’ve seen, it can absorb states of exception without dooming the wider endeavour of European free movement.

Schengen is still growing

If Schengen is bound for the dustbin of history, nobody’s told the states queuing up to join it.

Just this year, Romania and Bulgaria partially joined the Schengen Area, with border checks removed at sea and air borders. They have not yet passed the threshold at which land borders can be eliminated, but ongoing talks should soon unlock this.

Cyprus is currently in the process of joining Schengen, with membership slated for some time within the next year. The drama at Germany’s borders is compelling. Yet expansion, not contraction or retrenchment, will define the Schengen story for the foreseeable future.

A new Schengen?

Despite this week’s news, it seems unlikely that we will see the Schengen Area rolled back any time soon. The right to freedom of movement is so hardcoded in Europe, politically, economically and emotionally, that it will always need to be represented.

But it is undeniable that Germany’s border control initiative reveals troubling points of weakness in Schengen’s rights-based mobility guarantee. The Schengen Agreement was signed in 1985, a time when Europe scarcely imagined such huge movements of people trying to cross their borders.

Recent revisions to the Borders Code to firm up coordination and border control measures may still not be enough to deal with stress of this scale. Similarly, border digitalisation will help reduce irregular migration at the margins. But the pressure from parties like AfD and their counterparts in other countries will doubtless continue. Rumblings in the business world, such as Swedish labour unions’ ongoing conflict with Tesla, display other chinks in the armour of European mobility.

By the decade’s end, Schengen may well have been stripped back to a very different agreement. But that is just speculation. For now, free movement continues as before, just with slightly more friction.

Want to understand the Schengen Area’s rules in greater depth? Grab our free guide to Schengen compliance.