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.
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