WDespite so many economic and political challenges on the horizon, the EU is here to do a little bit of old-fashioned magic and do much more than just react. We started 2025 with this reminder. At midnight on January 1st, a dog crossed the border between Romania and Hungary. Like the other people who followed the dog, no, I didn’t have to show any ID. As of 2025, Romania and Bulgaria will be full members of the Schengen Area. The Schengen Area rejects the counterintuitive dismantling of borders in an era of rising nationalism.
The words “We created Europe, now we must create Europeans” are often attributed to Jean Monnet, one of the founding fathers of the European Union. Even if he never actually said so, the “becoming” of Europeans is concretely manifested in two ways. Both involve movement. Erasmus – the system that gave its name to a whole generation of students who opened the door to Europe – and the Schengen Agreement, which abolished physical borders between most countries in the EU.
The first time I experienced the Schengen effect (when I cycled across the bridge over the Rhine from Strasbourg, France to Kehl, Germany), I thought it was something worth noting. I was amused to learn that it is common for people living in Strasbourg to cross the border to Kale to do their grocery shopping. For some reason it was cheaper in German supermarkets. You can also complete your cross-border errands on the tram.
It soon became simply unpleasant for me that there was no border of any kind, let alone between Strasbourg and Kehl. Is it a train from Paris to Brussels? there is nothing. Is it the train to Amsterdam? Nothing yet. It felt as meaningful as when, as a child, I drove from Ohio to New York to visit my grandparents, and somewhere along the way, I hurried past a sign that said, “Pennsylvania Welcomes You!” Nationalism in the words of war poets like Rupert Brooke seemed to live in the past. Did it matter where French soil ends and German soil begins? To fresh outsiders, Europe was just Europe.
When I first experienced identity management within the Schengen area (on the TGV from Brussels to Paris), it was a surprise because it was a real break from the seamless European space experience. Not only logically, but also cognitively. When you walk, bike, drive, or roll across a border without anything happening, the power you once exerted disappears. You probably don’t even realize you’re in a “different location” until you receive a text notification from your cell phone provider. Paris-Brussels is not as important as Paris-Lyon. The route between Paris and Cologne is the same as between Paris and Marseille (but without the benefit of the sun).
A few years ago, Luxembourgians expressed surprise and displeasure at the common sight of French police cars refueling on duty at Luxembourg gas stations. Perhaps choosing the most conveniently located gas station was not strictly a “cross-border mission” (it was allowed under Schengen rules), but a unified, more federal For those who believe in Europe, this speaks to Europe’s development as a nation. A seamless cognitive space, a win.
The fact that there are no physical borders, meaning you have to pull out your national ID card or passport and show it to someone in uniform, means that consciously or unconsciously, this is all just one contiguous continent. Establish in your mind that this is the case. A collection of noisy nation-states. And the moment you have to take out your wallet, there are political boundaries in the world again. This person is Portuguese, this person is Spanish, that person is Italian, and the other is Dutch.
Recognizing this, the Schengen Agreement allows the reintroduction of border security only in situations where public policy or internal security is threatened, in which case it is a last resort, and in practice is minimal and essential. I am asking for it to be temporary. Indeed, both France and Spain have used temporary border controls relatively frequently, initially to justify immigration and more recently for security reasons. When France reintroduced border checks with Belgium on November 13, 2015 after the terrorist attacks in Paris, it was done on the basis of a protection rationale. This reaction was understandable, given that many of the attackers were from or had close ties to the Molenbeek district of Brussels, and one of the terrorists, Salah Abdeslam, was later arrested. Slowly over the past decade, other countries have followed this same logic, with Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Italy, and France now reintroducing border checks.
These moves may be made under the purported protection of the public, but they all create risks. This is a more difficult and diffused danger to confront than any concrete idea of stopping crime or terrorism, but in the long run repeated intrusions into Europe’s seamless cognitive fabric are socially destructive. There is also. Schengen borders can be temporarily reimposed in case of a threat to public policy, but what if the reintroduction of borders is itself a threat to European public policy?
There was a thought experiment in last year’s Guardian newspaper column about the Olympics that has stuck with me. To determine how special something is, you need to imagine it didn’t exist and ask yourself, “How difficult would it be to create it today?” thought about it.
By that measure, the Schengen Agreement is certainly special, with clear and obvious benefits, but domestic political forces could prevent its realization if it did not already exist. There is sex. Countries that continue to nibble on the practices that have kept many borders out of sight and consciousness should keep that in mind.
