Beyond the Euro Crisis: Immigration, Schengen and Yet Another Problem in European Integration

• Global Affairs

In Europe, the discourse concerning immigration and asylum has understandably been sidelined in favor of the more pressing issue of the future of the common European currency.

Nevertheless, even during this period of relative quiescence, the immigration issue has resurfaced in the form of a serious questioning within the EU of the viability of the Schengen accords in their present form. However, the Schengen accords, which mandate free circulation of goods and people through most of the European Union, abolishing controls on internal national borders within the EU except for very limited periods for well-defined security concerns, are even more essential to the concept of European integration than is the Euro. Unraveling from the Euro would undoubtedly cause a great deal of economic chaos, but the European Union itself would probably survive; reestablishing internal border controls at will, on the other hand, would be such a serious blow to the development of a United Europe that one could justifiably question the seriousness of those who are proposing it.

The problems seen with the Schengen accords are essentially parallel to those of the Euro. Countries on the periphery of Europe— Spain, Italy, and Greece— are perceived by other EU states as unwilling to fulfill their responsibilities of policing their external borders of the EU; once irregular migration enters the EU through the porous external borders, because Schengen forbids regular border checks within the EU, migrants can move freely into the rest of the Union— mainly Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Austria. Hence, these countries have to pick up the bill, which is, in the case of immigration, more social and cultural than economic, for the “irresponsible” countries of the periphery. It may, in fact, be that these social and cultural costs are even more difficult, and dangerous, to cover than the economic costs necessitated by the monetary union.

While preserving the Euro has put much of Europe through economic purgatory, and austerity has eroded concepts of social justice and welfare, the costs incurred in order to preserve the free movement of goods and people throughout the EU are even higher.  Although the peoples of Europe have been lead to view the influx of non European races, ethnicities, and religions as a threat to European values, the perceived vulnerability caused by open internal borders have lead Europeans to undertake measures that clearly undermine treasured principles of human rights developed since the Enlightenment.  As with the Euro crisis, the supposed cure may very well prove to be worse than the disease.

Bruce Leimsidor currently teaches European asylum law at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice. He has been concurrently counselor for asylum affairs in the Venice municipality’s program for asylum seekers. Prior to his positions in Venice, he was a senior resettlement expert at UNHCR’s central resource center in Nairobi, Kenya, covering east and central Africa. He has also served as director of the US State Department’s Overseas Processing Entity (OPE) in Vienna, Austria, the central office covering US refugee admissions through Central Europe, and was the director of the Central European office of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). He has taught at the American University, Paris; Oberlin College; Occidental College; and Indiana University. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College and holds an advanced degree from Princeton University.