Preserving or Strengthening Schengen? EPC Commentary, 10 November 2017

While the multiple crises of recent years are slowly but surely giving way to a renewed optimism about the European project, one of the European Union’s most symbolic and tangible achievements, the Schengen area, is not out of the danger zone yet. Rather, political pressures on maintaining a free movement area without internal border controls seem as high as they were at the height of the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’. Because of the sustained unwillingness of some member states to lift internal border controls, the EU’s policies on Schengen are strongly dominated by intergovernmental interests, reviving memories of the system’s early days outside the EU legal system. A new Commission proposal on modifying the Schengen Borders Code (SBC), presented with the subtitle “Preserving and Strengthening Schengen”, appears to be more about preserving Schengen in the face of an antagonistic political climate rather than strengthening its essence, i.e., an area without internal border control