Free movement—the right to live, study, work and retire anywhere in the European Union—is perhaps the most palpable of achievements since the EU bloc first formed the Schengen area in 1995, whereby checks were abolished at the Union’s internal borders.
Today, the Schengen area encompasses most EU member states, except for Ireland and the UK, which maintain opt-outs and operate their own common travel area, as well as Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, which are obliged to join Schengen.
Four non-EU countries—Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein—have also joined the Schengen area in its vision of a borderless travel zone for Europe at large.
Meanwhile, the process of Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia’s entry is ongoing, as EU national governments must unanimously decide to allow new states to enter the border-free zone.
Map of the Schengen area (Photo: Facebook)
The conditions for joining the Schengen area are as follows.
- Countries must take responsibility for controlling the EU’s external borders.
- They must apply a common set of Schengen rule, such as controls of land, sea and air frontiers, as well as the issuing of uniform Schengen visits.
- To ensure a high level of security within the Schengen area, states must cooperate with law enforcement agencies in other Schengen countries and operate the Schengen Information System (SIS).
The future of Schengen was the focus of a recent hearing of the civil liberties committee on 20 February.
European Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos also spoke at the civil liberties committee hearing. He referred to Schengen as “the core symbol of our unity” and called on “the Council to finally decide for Bulgaria and Romania to join the Schengen family – and of course Croatia, as soon as it is technically ready”.
Since 2015, in the wake of the migration crisis, as well as the increase of cross-border terrorist threats, a number of Schengen states reintroduced internal border controls.
These controls were prolonged on a number of occasions, most recently until April 2018 in the case of France, and until May 2018 in the case of Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
Some MEPs claimed at the meeting that the Schengen mechanism has far too often been turned into a scapegoat for all the shortcomings of EU’s security and asylum policy.
However, a significant number of MEPs defended the internal border checks as one of the few viable alternatives should the EU wish to reduce secondary and other irregular movements in a travel zone where more than 1.25 billion journeys are made on a yearly basis.
By MSEAP Cyber Secretariat (mseap@assembly.go.kr) |
