Europe is giving up on free movement

Spectator

16 hours ago

Ten years ago on 31 August 2015, Angela Merkel told the German press what she was going to do about the swell of Syrian refugees heading to Europe. With the three fateful words 'Wir schaffen das' – 'We can handle it' – she ushered in a new era of uncontrolled mass migration, not just for Germany but for the rest of the European Union too.
The then chancellor, so often described by her supporters in the press as the 'queen of Europe', was adamant that Germany was a 'strong country', which had the resources to support the sudden influx of migrants. 'We will provide protection to all those fleeing to us from wars,' she insisted. Whether or not other European leaders shared her confidence was immaterial. Thanks to the EU's porous internal borders and the freedom of movement, in practice her open-doors migration policy applied to every member state.
'In retrospect it was pretty much the most disastrous government policy of this century anywhere in Europe,' says one senior British diplomat. The inevitable surge of immigrants into Europe from Syria and North Africa, which began in 2015, helped swing the vote for Brexit the following year. It emboldened the people-trafficking industry and duly destabilised politics in almost every European country, as populist and anti-immigration parties thrived on public anger.
Wir schaffen das will haunt Merkel for the rest of her life. Yet her other remarks that day have largely been forgotten. In the same press conference she warned: 'If Europe fails on the refugee question, this close relationship with universal citizen rights [for which the continent is known] will be broken. It will be destroyed and Europe will no longer be what we see it to be.'
She was devastatingly wrong and right. Thanks to her decisions, Germany and the EU more generally manifestly failed to manage the migrant crisis. Yet she was correct that failure to deal with the 'refugee question' would change Europe beyond recognition. A decade later, that gleaming foundational principle of the EU – the freedom to move between member states uninhibited – has been put on hold, perhaps indefinitely. Nine EU countries – Poland, Slovenia, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany – have temporary border controls in operation.
Since 2015, more than 7.5 million asylum claims have been made across the EU. The Willkommenskultur ('welcome culture') championed by Merkel is nothing more than a sour memory for many of Europe's governing parties. EU members from Poland to Spain are buckling under the political and social strain of illegal migration (euphemistically referred to as 'irregular migration'). Populist and nationalist parties are on the rise, and many of today's politicians would dispute that the EU should grant inalienable rights to whoever crosses its borders.
The debate has moved on to how to remove illegal arrivals. The Tory government's plan to deport migrants to Rwanda was the subject of much derision; now European governments are considering following suit. Both Austria and Germany have in the past two years expressed interest in a similar 'Rwanda-style' scheme for processing asylum claims abroad. Last September, the former German migration commissioner Joachim Stamp went as far as to suggest that Berlin use the facilities which lie abandoned since Keir Starmer's government scrapped the Rwanda scheme. So far only Italy's Giorgia Meloni has managed to strike a third-country asylum processing agreement (with Albania in 2023), although it has yet to become operational, thanks to the interference of the European Court of Justice. But across the continent, politicians on the right are now echoing Donald Trump and becoming bolder in their calls for mass deportation.
Before the summer of 2015, migrants seeking refuge in Europe were obliged to apply for asylum in the first member state of the bloc they entered under the rules of the EU's Dublin agreement. All that changed when Merkel's government suspended the rules for Syrian nationals, triggering a Europe-wide stampede, as Syrians, followed by Afghans, Iranians, Iraqis and more, scrambled to claim refuge in Germany.
Their passage across Europe was eased by the Schengen Agreement, which had abolished internal border controls between EU member states, allowing people to pass between countries without paperwork checks. It didn't matter that, after just two weeks, on 13 September 2015, the German government introduced temporary border controls to stem the flow. The refugees kept coming: by the end of 2015, 1.1 million had made it to Germany. In the ensuing years, more than two million would follow.
The Schengen zone of free movement, which turned 40 this year, is in a sorry state. Those temporary border controls Merkel brought in a decade ago are being used by a third of the EU's member states within the area. Under the rules governing the zone, member states can introduce the controls as a 'last resort' in the event of a 'serious threat to public policy or internal security' and renew them for up to six months at a time.
According to the list drawn up by the European Commission, seven of the nine EU members which have imposed temporary border checks have done so in response to the pressure they are under from illegal migration. Austria, for example, which faces migrants entering the EU via the west Balkans, first closed its borders with Slovenia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary in October 2023, citing threats associated with the high levels of 'irregular migration and migrant smuggling', as well as 'the strain on the asylum reception system and basic services'.
France first shut its borders with Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Spain and Italy last November. Among its reasons for doing so was 'the growing criminal networks facilitating irregular migration and smuggling, and irregular migration flows towards the Franco-British border that risk infiltration by radicalised individuals'. Emmanuel Macron's government is struggling to respond to the popularity of the right-wing National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen, which is more than ten points ahead in the polls. In June, Le Pen derided the EU's new pact to establish a common asylum system – due to be operational by the middle of next year – as 'a deal with the devil to flood Europe with migrants, dilute the population and wipe out European culture'.
Meloni became prime minister of Italy in large part because she had promised to restrict immigration and people believed her. Italy is the most commonly used entry point into Europe for illegal migrants from North Africa. It is also used as a transit country for those travelling from the west Balkans. Meloni shocked some of her right-wing admirers last month when she agreed to issue 500,000 work visas for non-EU applicants between 2026 and 2028. Nevertheless, she cannot be called a soft touch. She shut Italy's internal borders with Slovenia in October 2023 because of the 'continued threat of terrorist infiltrations into migratory flows' and a 'high level of irregular migration including a strong presence of criminal smuggling and trafficking networks'. Rome has introduced additional passport checks for anyone travelling to 'migration sensitive' countries such as Germany, France or Sweden.
The Netherlands also introduced temporary border controls with Germany and Belgium in December last year due to the 'overburdening of the migration system… as well as pressure on public services, including housing, health care and education'. The country is heading to the polls on 29 October, after the leader of the anti-Islam Freedom party, Geert Wilders, pulled out of the governing coalition in June in a row over immigration and asylum policy. The polls are tight, but Wilders, who launched his election campaign at a protest against a new asylum seekers' centre being built in the city of Helmond, is leading on 19 per cent.
Germany went so far as to impose border controls along all nine of its shared EU borders in October 2023 after pressure was heaped on the government by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party. Following a series of terror attacks committed by failed asylum seekers last year, the AfD dominated February's federal election campaign with a fervent anti-immigrant message. The party's co-leader Alice Weidel repeatedly pushed the controversial, yet vague, policy of 'remigration' for an as-yet-undefined cohort of foreigners.
In May, Germany's Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, introduced a new, tougher border regime, giving border guards the power to turn back anyone trying to enter without the correct paperwork. The federal police were also granted the power to reject asylum seekers at the border if they had grounds to do so. The measures were necessary, Merz said, because 'the protection of Europe's external borders is not sufficiently guaranteed'.
Merz's new border checks have, however, worsened relations with Poland, which introduced temporary border checks last month. A presidential election campaign in June was won by the conservative Karol Nawrocki, who ran on the slogan 'Poland first, Poles first'. Self-styled 'citizen patrols' of far-right vigilantes have been gathering along the Polish-German border to protest and obstruct the German authorities' efforts to send migrants back across the border.
David Cameron could be forgiven for watching all this with grim satisfaction, since the leaders of the EU are now going far further than the modest restrictions on freedom of movement he requested in 2015 and 2016, which Brussels rejected. The result has been not just the break-up of Britain from the EU but a fracturing within the EU itself.
The breakdown in trust and new border controls being introduced by EU neighbours make the future of the Schengen area look doubtful. The EU plans to update its external border controls to make it harder to cross into the bloc illegally. From 12 October, the EU will roll out its new 'Entry-Exit System', requiring non-EU citizens to provide fingerprints and photographs when they cross the border. Towards the end of next year, the bloc also plans to introduce the 'European travel information and authorisation system', which will require travellers to apply for permission to enter ahead of arrival.
In theory, most of the temporary border controls currently in force are due to expire in the coming months, but it would be political suicide to lift them. Sacrificing free movement under Schengen is a quick win for EU members unwilling or unable to do more to alleviate the concerns of their populations. As the diplomatic spat between Germany and Poland proves, until the EU can pull together on a cohesive migrant strategy, it's every state for itself.
The irony is that Britain, which left the EU partly in order to take back control of its borders, is now an outlier: while irregular crossings into the EU are down 18 per cent in the first seven months of this year, attempted and successful illegal crossings into Britain via the Channel are up 26 per cent compared with last year, with nearly 42,000 migrants having made the journey so far this year.
In these conditions, free movement cannot survive. Faced with a choice of protecting their political futures, or defending the EU's noble principles, Europe's leaders will always opt for the former. 'I have always advocated European solutions,' said Merkel, pointedly, after Merz's border regime was introduced. 'Otherwise, we could see Europe destroyed.' Yet European leaders increasingly see their job as salvaging their countries from the destruction she wrought.