Schengen at risk

In a week dominated by the harrowing image of a dead toddler lying at the water’s edge in Bodrum, Turkey, the European refugee crisis is no nearer a solution. Less harrowing but no less symbolic were images of refugees eventually crossing from Hungary into Austria and from there hoping to get to Germany, which has agreed to take 800,000 refugees this year alone. This mass movement of people is in large part triggered by the conflicts that followed the Arab spring, and there is little sign of the flow stopping in the foreseeable future. This surge was not foreseen by the architects of the Schengen Agreement in 1985, when the world was very different from what it is today. The agreement is a cornerstone of the European Union (EU) as it effectively erases borders within the EU and allows people and goods to move freely between one country and another without barriers.

The refugee crisis is having the unintended consequence of triggering a debate about the viability of the Schengen in the light of an influx such as that currently in train. Europe generally is in the midst of a fragile economic recovery, and a rise in immigration in any of the countries that are party to Schengen is likely to reduce political support for it. There is already friction within the EU over which country should accept the refugees, and the UK has announced that it would take ‘thousands’ more refugees but only from Syria and only from the population already in Iraq or Turkey — which does nothing to ease the plight of those in transit. Hungary has built a razor-wire fence along its borders, and others will follow. European politics has moved to the right, and the rise of nationalist parties fits poorly with the increasing numbers of asylum seekers heading to EU countries, some of which are calling for a revision of Schengen in the light of current events and others are calling for its abolition altogether, and a return to a Europe with tight, discrete borders. There are going to be more toddlers in the surf.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 8^th,  2015.

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