When I crossed the bridge over the Rhine last year, a checkpoint blocked the route between France and Germany, at the Pont de l'Europe.
Borders are being closed in Europe, for reasons ranging from “ongoing crises in Eastern Europe and the Middle East” to “increasing migrant pressures and the risk of terrorist infiltration.” France cites “threats to public policy, public order.” Germany is calling for a “global security situation.” Austria and the Netherlands point to “irregular migration,” while Italy points to an influx “through the Mediterranean route and the Balkan route.”
It wasn't meant to be this way. European integration promised the abolition of borders, a “closer union” allowing the free movement of people, goods and capital in the single market. That promise was included in the Schengen area, an open border area created during the twilight of the Cold War – with an agreement between France, West Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands – and which now includes 29 European countries. But fear of migrants crossing Europe freely made Schengen a fragile project from the start.
Schengen was once a symbol of international freedom, a milestone of European unity built after World War II. Today it is a symbol of Europe's migration crisis – a crisis that is causing the reverse of globalization and the rise of disenfranchisement.
Such miracles plague Schengen's history. Yet all that has been forgotten is a time of deep irony – when the fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989, almost ended the opening of Europe's borders. Perversely, the sudden destruction of the symbolic border of the entire continent has brought progress to the Schengen agreement, which reveals the dangers of free movement today that pressures the return of checkpoints in Europe.
The year 1989 was to end the Schengen agreement. But revolutionary events intervened. Riots swept through Eastern Europe, mass protests rocked the German Democratic Republic, and some three million East Germans fell into West Berlin when the wall fell on Nov. 9.
The outbreak of 1989 hastened the end of the Cold War, paving the way for a new era of globalization. But the lifting of the Iron Curtain made the complexity of dismantling borders clear – and nowhere more so than in Berlin. Standing on the outer border of Schengen, its border opened to a wave of people from Eastern Europe, Berlin gained extraordinary importance.
So the peaceful revolutions of 1989, and the people's movement that was allowed by the breach of the Berlin Wall, hindered the implementation of the Schengen agreement. “Borderless Europe stumbles in Schengen,” notes Monde, and the obstacle, “ironically, the freedom to come and go was retaken in the East.”
The signing of the Schengen agreement was scheduled for the end of the year – in the castle chapel in Schengen, the town in Luxembourg that gave the agreement its name. But negotiations broke down, in a tête-à-tête between France and West Germany on the night of Dec. 13, left the agreement unsigned.
The conflict centered on the prospect of German reunification. A united Germany will not only change the balance of power in Europe; and will extend the Schengen border to the east. That would increase the risk of irregular migration from countries belonging to the Soviet bloc – Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania – classified as security risks in a secret list prepared by the treaty makers to determine which people will be excluded from Schengen's guarantee of free movement. .
A proposal declaring that East Germany was not a “foreign country” in relation to West Germany was at the center of this turmoil. It would open the Schengen area to all Germans, a bid put forward by Bonn. But there was a stumbling block: East Germany was among the countries whose citizens it listed as security risks on the secret Schengen list. The signing was stopped, as the Schengen states failed to reach an agreement on the German question. It was Bonn who halted the talks, demanding “time to think” about opening the East-West German border.
As migration from Eastern Europe accelerated, the European Commission warned of the “fragility of the Schengen agreement.” The French treaty makers spoke of “German difficulties” caused by “unforeseen events in the countries of Eastern Europe.” A guest from Luxembourg wondered if the guarantee of free movement would survive: “The way things are going, it will be better to be property or capital” than to cross borders “as a person.”
According to documents labeled “secret and personal,” the West German chancellor, Helmut Kohl, complained to the French president, François Mitterrand, that “the French were dragging their feet and they must sign the agreement.” Meanwhile, Mitterrand revealed his fear of revanchist Germany to the British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. A memo from Thatcher's private secretary explained the president's views: “The prospect of reunification has brought shock to the Germans. Its effect was to turn them back into the 'bad' Germans they had been.”
Still, European leaders see the inevitable in West Germany's ambitions. “It would be foolish to refuse to reunite,” as Thatcher's aide summed up Mitterrand's thinking. “In fact, there is no power in Europe that could prevent it from happening. None of us would declare war on Germany.”
The signing of the Schengen agreement finally took place in June 1990, completing the agreement established in 1985. Most of the provisions of the agreement impose security measures, including rules that allow Schengen countries to restore internal border checks temporarily as required by “public policy or national security.” .” The resolution of the German question appeared in a statement predicting reunification (which would take place at the end of the year). At the time, however, Schengen's external borders remained closed to migrants from elsewhere in the Eastern bloc, not even borderless Berlin providing a port of entry to the area with the right to free movement.
From this moment – as the Schengen negotiations faced the chaos of 1989 – a blueprint for free movement but also its restriction emerged. This agreement introduced a Europe without internal borders. At the same time, it provided for the strengthening of Schengen's external borders, the creation of international security services and the expulsion of the so-called “undesirables” from Eastern Europe and Asia, Africa and the Caribbean.
This is the predicament symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall: the innocence of free movement in a world where the dangers of open borders seem so grave.
Today, the vulnerability of Schengen is reflected in the chaos of European border measures. Schengen borders continue to expand, including countries that were once behind the Iron Curtain – Romania and Bulgaria this year. Meanwhile, Europe's internal borders are being tightened as a solution to the problems associated with globalization, signaling the death of Schengen by a thousand cuts.
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