When I crossed a bridge spanning the Rhine River last year, a checkpoint blocked the route between France and Germany on the Pont de l’Europe.
Borders are closing in Europe Reason Ranging from “the ongoing crisis in Eastern Europe and the Middle East” to “increasing migratory pressures and the threat of terrorist infiltration”. France cites “public policy, threat to public order”. Germany has termed it a “global security situation”. Austria and the Netherlands point to “irregular migration”, and Italy to influx “along the Mediterranean route and the Balkan route”.
It didn’t have to be this way. European integration promised the abolition of borders, “an even closer union” allowing free movement of people, goods and capital within a single market. That promise was embodied in the Schengen Zone, an area of open borders created in the twilight of the Cold War – by a treaty between France, West Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands – and now encompassing 29 European countries. But migrants’ fear of moving freely in Europe made Schengen a fragile project from the start.
Schengen was once a symbol of liberal internationalism, a landmark of European unity created after World War II. Today it symbolizes Europe’s migration crisis – a crisis that is generating a backlash against globalization and the rise of illiberalism.
Such contradictions haunt the history of Schengen. Yet all but forgotten is the moment of deepest paradox – when the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 almost guaranteed the opening of Europe’s borders. Perversely, the sudden destruction of the continent’s most symbolic border halted progress on the Schengen Treaty, exposing the risks to free movement that today compel the withdrawal of checkpoints in Europe.
The year 1989 was the time when the Schengen Treaty was to be completed. But revolutionary events intervened. Unrest spread across Eastern Europe, with mass protests rocking the German Democratic Republic and nearly three million East Germans pouring into West Berlin when the Wall fell on November 9.
The 1989 meltdown hastened the end of the Cold War, opening the way for a new era of globalization. But with the fall of the Iron Curtain the complexities of abolishing borders became clear – and nowhere more so than in Berlin. Standing on the outskirts of Schengen, with its borders open to people from Eastern Europe, Berlin acquired extraordinary importance.
So it came to pass that the human movement enabled by the peaceful revolutions of 1989 and the breach of the Berlin Wall disrupted the creation of the Schengen Treaty. “Europe without borders is floundering in Schengen,” Le Monde said, and the obstacle was that, “paradoxically, the freedom of coming and going recovered in the East.”
The signing of the Shengen Treaty was scheduled for the end of the year – in the chapel of a castle in Shengen, a village in Luxembourg that gave the treaty its name. But on the night of December 13, negotiations between France and West Germany broke down and the treaty was not signed.
The conflict centered on the possibility of German reunification. A reunified Germany would not only change the balance of power in Europe; It would also extend the border of Schengen eastwards. This would increase the risk of irregular immigration from Soviet bloc countries – Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania – which were classified as security risks on secret lists drawn up by the treaty makers to determine which people will be excluded from the free movement guarantees of Schengen. ,
The proposal that East Germany was not “a foreign country” in relation to West Germany was at the center of the standoff. This would open the Schengen area to all Germans, which was a bid put forward by Bonn. But there was one hurdle: East Germany was among the countries whose citizens were counted as security risks on the secret Schengen list. The signing was canceled due to the failure of the Schengen states to reach agreement on the German question. It was Bonn that halted the talks, asking for “time for reflection” on opening the East-West German border.
As migration from Eastern Europe accelerated, the European Commission warned about the “weakness of the Schengen Agreement”. The French treaty makers spoke of the “German difficulty” arising “due to unexpected events in Eastern European countries.” A representative of Luxembourg wondered whether the guarantee of free movement would survive: “The way things are, it would be better to become a commodity or capital than to cross the border as “a person”.
According to diplomatic papers marked “secret and personal”, the West German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, complained to the French President, François Mitterrand, that “the French were dragging their feet and should sign the agreement.” Meanwhile, Mitterrand told the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, of his fear of a rebellious Germany. A memorandum from Thatcher’s private secretary described the president’s views: “The sudden prospect of reunification had given the Germans a kind of mental shock. The effect was that they once again became the same ‘bad’ Germans as before.”
Nevertheless, Europe’s leaders saw the inevitability of West Germany’s aspirations. As Thatcher’s aide summarized Mitterrand’s thinking, “It would be foolish to say no to reunification.” “There was really no power in Europe that could stop this from happening. None of us were going to declare war on Germany.
The Schengen Treaty was finally signed in June 1990, completing an agreement begun in 1985. Most of the treaty’s provisions set out safeguards, including rules allowing Schengen countries to temporarily reinstate internal border checks if “public policy or national security requires it”. , The solution to the German question was revealed in a statement predicting reunification (which would take place by the end of the year). However, at the time, Schengen’s external borders were closed to migrants from elsewhere in the Eastern Bloc, and even borderless Berlin did not offer a way into the privileged zone of free movement.
From this moment – when the Schengen negotiators faced the turmoil of 1989 – a blueprint emerged for free movement, but also for its restrictions. The treaty established a Europe without internal borders. At the same time, it provided for the fortification of Schengen’s external borders, the creation of a multinational security mechanism, and the exclusion of so-called “undesirable” migrants from Eastern Europe as well as Asia, Africa and the Caribbean.
This is the crisis that the fall of the Berlin Wall symbolized: the uncertainty of free movement in a world where the dangers of open borders appear even more acute.
Today, the vulnerability of Schengen is reflected in the chaos of Europe’s border measures. Schengen’s borders continue to expand, this year taking in countries that were once behind the Iron Curtain, such as Romania and Bulgaria. Meanwhile, Europe’s internal borders are being tightened as a cure for the ills caused by globalization, marking the death of Schengen by a thousand cuts.