Some of the greatest achievements of the European Union are invisible. Literally so.
Who remembers when you had to queue to enter Belgium or Germany from France? There is no parallel elsewhere in the world for a large group of countries whose common borders are wide open.
Oldies, like me, may notice with pleasure that the frontier posts have gone; younger people take their absence for granted.
The single market is another “invisible asset” of the EU. Trade between Milan and Munich, Madrid and Malmö is as uncomplicated as trade between Paris and Lyon or Berlin and Frankfurt.
Most Europeans now regard that as normal. After the Brexiteer lies of 2016, British businesses, fishermen and farmers discovered to their cost what “single market” really meant.
A menace is now rising, this time internally, to one of these great, invisible achievements of the European Union.
Since the Schengen agreement of 1985, the internal borders of the EU have progressively disappeared. This free movement area now extends to 29 countries – all the 27 EU member states except Ireland and Cyprus, plus non-EU countries Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland.
Cars and trucks can move as freely between France and Germany or Poland and the Czech Republic as though they were in the same country. The twin French and German cities of Strasbourg and Kehl even have a joint tram line.
Although “invisible”, the absence of formal borders is one of the most powerful symbols of the unity of a sometimes disunited European Union.
The open borders now appear to be threatened. Last month Germany introduced spot-checks on all its frontiers. Seven other countries already operate such temporary restrictions, supposedly limited initially to six months and extendable for up to two years.
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France has, with EU permission, been imposing random checks on its border with Italy since 2015.
In theory, such exceptions are allowed only when there is a clear security threat. In France’s case, and now Germany’s, the random checks are aimed mostly at illegal migrants.
Does it matter? Most cross-border travellers should see no difference. The old, systematic identity checks are not being re-introduced. There will be no man or woman in a peaked cap shouting “papers” on the 27-minute tram ride across the Rhine between Strasbourg and Kehl.
The German government says that even the spot-checks on main motorway crossings will be suspended in busy periods to allow cross-border workers to travel freely. Everyone will be expected to carry a passport or identity card, just in case. But that is also true within most EU countries.
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You might ask therefore: “Why bother?” People smugglers and terrorists can presumably work out when the cross-border rush-hours occur. They can use the smaller road crossings - or the tram.
The German checks, like the recurring French checks on the Italian border, are mostly political rather than practical. In Germany’s case, they are a response to the success of the Far Right in elections in eastern Germany and two terrorist attacks this summer carried out by migrants who entered the country illegally.
It would make more sense to concentrate on strengthening the EU’s common external border and improving cooperation between the 27 on the sharing out of asylum seekers.
The first is already happening. The number of illegal migrants registered by the EU border agency Frontex has fallen this year by 36 percent (113,000 people in the first seven months).
The EU “pact on migration and asylum” concluded in June is meant to ensure better burden-sharing of asylum seekers between the northern countries, especially Germany, and the southern countries, especially Italy and Greece, where most migrants arrive. It is also supposed to generate deals with countries along the North African coast to block illegal migrants or to allow their return.
Nonetheless, the Far Right continues to thrive – in Germany, in Austria, in the Netherlands, in Belgium and in France – by exaggerating the migrant threat and by offering simplistic solutions. Those “solutions” include, in the case of Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National in France and the AFD in Germany, the de facto abolition of Schengen.
Spot checks will not solve the migration problem. Even full border controls will not do so. Look at the example of Britain, which never joined Schengen. Full frontier formalities and the most dangerous short sea crossing in the world have not stopped determined and desperate people from reaching the UK.
You might also ask: “Do the spot checks matter?” The borders will remain largely open.
I believe they do matter. There are two reasons to fear the consequences of even limited and legal exceptions to Europe’s open border achievements of the last four decades.
The restrictions will deepen the quarrels between EU countries which the migrant pact was supposed to solve. Austria has already said that it will refuse to take back illegal migrants blocked at its common border with Germany.
Poland and Greece have also protested. France has been quiet, presumably because the new hard-line interior minister, Bruno Retailleau wants to continue, and maybe strengthen, existing French controls on the border.
The second reason to fear the consequences of Germany’s limited action is symbolic.
Until now Germany has been one of the EU countries most open to migration. It takes one in four of the asylum seekers in the EU-27. Its economic power and central position make the new restrictions – however limited - politically explosive.
Invisible advantages are wonderful until they vanish because politicians exaggerate the allegedly visible disadvantages they create. That is what happened in the UK with Brexit and the Single Market.
The new German exceptions to Schengen will not make much difference to illegal migration. But they could be a first step towards making the invisible advantages of open borders disappear.
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