Last month marked 40 years of Schengen—what should have been a celebratory anniversary of a virtually borderless Europe. Instead, as a sign of the times, on July 1st, Poland announced the reinstatement of border controls with Germany and Lithuania, following accusations that its western neighbor secretly “dumped” illegal migrants inside Poland.
On 14 June 1985, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands met in the Luxembourg town of Schengen to sign an unprecedented agreement. It would allow the five countries to abolish checks at their internal borders, enabling the free movement of people, goods, and services between them.
Since then, as the European Union expanded, the Schengen area has been extended nine times—most recently at the beginning of this year to include Bulgaria and Romania. Today, it consists of 29 countries and guarantees free movement for 450 million people. The EU, naturally, regards this as a massive success and one of the bloc’s crowning achievements.
Four decades on, there is little to praise Schengen for. What was once touted as one of the EU’s biggest advantages and greatest successes has resulted in uncontrolled migration. At the height of the migration crisis in 2015, an estimated 1.83 million people entered the EU illegally that we know of—the largest displacement of people into Europe in a single year since the Second World War. By 2023, that number had dropped to 385,000, though even this is wildly unsustainable.
Those arriving into Europe illegally are able to use Schengen loopholes to claim asylum there. In some cases, asylum seekers will obtain refugee status in entry points like Greece and Bulgaria, only to use their new temporary ID cards to travel to Germany, where they can once again apply for asylum—and, they hope, enjoy better living conditions and much more generous state benefits.
This has proven too much for many EU states. Eleven nations—including all the Schengen founding members—have given up on borderless travel and have reintroduced checkpoints. This is particularly the case on busy migration routes, such as on the borders between Germany and Poland and Italy and Slovenia. Since bringing in temporary border checks in September last year, Germany saw a 34% decrease in asylum requests and had rejected a total of 47,000 people at the border. Similarly, illegal crossings on the Italy-Slovenia border showed a similar drop since reinstating checks in October 2023. As a result, many countries have decided to renew these ‘temporary’ measures.
Despite an apparent crackdown, many Europeans are still unhappy with the sporadic and inconsistent way border rules are being enforced. In the Netherlands and Poland, for example, citizens have taken matters into their own hands. Last month, it was reported that a group of Dutch citizens were donning hi-vis vests and carrying out their own checks on those arriving across the border with Germany at Ter Apel. This week, some 30 Polish volunteers attempted to prevent the entry of migrants from Germany.
Despite all this, the European Commission still believes that Schengen is working seamlessly. Marking the 40-year anniversary, it boasted that “we are safer too, thanks to Schengen.” Supposedly, “reducing barriers internally was accompanied by increased cooperation between police forces, customs authorities and external border control authorities, helping to make Europe more secure and reinforcing our external borders and managing migration more effectively.”
Except, of course, that hasn’t happened at all. On the contrary: Brussels has punished countries like Hungary for taking the protection of Schengen borders seriously. A ruling by the European Court of Justice just over a year ago ordered Hungary to pay a lump sum of €200 million, with an additional €1 million fine per day, for “failing to comply with EU asylum policies”—that is, for actually defending Schengen’s external borders when nobody else does.
Anyone with eyes can see the chaos Schengen has unleashed when it comes to migration, especially in regards to keeping track of who is coming and going. The EU’s digital border-security system remains patchy and vulnerable to hacking, and the start date Entry/Exit System (EES) to track non-EU visitors continues to be pushed back. Until that actually becomes reality, physical passport stamps remain the main way of recording who enters and leaves the Schengen area.
The EU also seems to think that Schengen has been instrumental in tackling terrorism and organised crime. But that isn’t true, either. On multiple occasions, the lack of border security within the EU has allowed terrorists to slip through the cracks and let violent criminals move freely across borders. In 2016, Tunisian national Anis Amri hijacked a truck and drove it into a Christmas market at Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz, killing 12 people and injuring over 50. He then managed to flee across four Schengen countries, leaving Germany and travelling through the Netherlands, Belgium, and France before reaching Italy. He remained on the run for four days until he was finally caught and killed by Italian police.
A similar fiasco unfolded last year, when a Syrian refugee stabbed three people to death in Solingen, Germany, during the town’s Festival of Diversity. Issa al Hassan arrived in Turkey in 2022 and made his way to Bulgaria to register as a refugee, but absconded from his accommodation without notice. In 2023, he turned up in Germany, where he registered for asylum again, but was denied. He should have then been deported back to Bulgaria under the Dublin agreement, but the German authorities gave up after one attempt. Instead, he was allowed to remain in the country to take the lives of three people and injure eight others. The attack ultimately spurred the German government to reintroduce border measures.
Schengen may be well-loved by tourists, Erasmus students, and the cosmopolitan classes. But it is the rest of Europe that has to bear the burden of open borders—crime, terror, and an unsustainable influx of new arrivals. When the Schengen area was conceived of in 1985, the premise was a bloc with lax internal controls, but strong external borders. The principle of free movement is only feasible if you can guarantee that the people freely moving are not a danger or a drain. That promise has been blatantly shattered by the EU.
The romantic vision of a borderless continent may still be alive in Brussels, but the rest of Europe is sick and tired of having to deal with the consequences of that fantasy. This is why the populist Right is gaining popularity across member states. The electoral success of Alternative for Germany (AfD) this year is forcing the German government to acknowledge how unhappy people are with open borders. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders—leader of the right-populist Party for Freedom—pulled his party out of the governing coalition last month, citing frustration over ministers’ refusal to implement the hardline asylum policies that many people voted for. Elsewhere, from Sweden to Spain, polling shows that a majority are fed up with uncontrolled migration.
Forty years on, it is clear that Schengen is not fit for purpose. What was promised to bring freedom, peace, and prosperity has delivered little more than chaos.
