Next June, the European Union will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the establishment of its flagship Schengen free movement zone, across which most EU citizens have the right to passport-free travel. During events to mark the occasion, however, EU officials, diplomats and politicians will all be doing their best to ignore the elephant in the room: the slow disintegration of the Schengen zone on their watch.
The inspiration for a borderless travel zone dates back almost 70 years to the founding of the EU’s precursor organization, the European Economic Community, or EEC, in 1957. That grouping was established in part to create a new era of cooperation that might put an end to the cycles of conflict in Europe that had culminated in the atrocities of World War II. Such high-minded ideals, however, quickly gave way to economic imperatives, namely the desire to more effectively compete with the U.S. and subsequently Japan by abolishing tariffs and customs checks within the EEC, while striking favorable trade deals with countries outside the bloc.
With the adoption of the Schengen agreement in 1985 by Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, the EEC took a major step on the path to closer European integration, followed by the creation of the EU single market in 1993 and the introduction of the euro six years later. When the Schengen agreement was officially incorporated into EU law in 1999, membership was made compulsory for all member states once certain technical requirements had been met, with the exception of Ireland and the U.K., which enjoyed opt-outs.