All eyes were on Westminster last night, as Parliament voted to commence airstrikes against IS in Syria.
According to reports on the BBC this morning, the first bombing raids began minutes after the vote.
But today I want to draw your attention to a slightly different part of this story… in a different part of the world.
We know that the crisis in Syria has led to huge numbers of refugees coming to Europe. This has put an increasing amount of strain on the countries in the immediate vicinity – and indeed Europe as whole. Primarily we’re talking about places like Turkey, Greece, Serbia and Hungary.
I’m not going to cover the humanitarian/moral side of the story here. That’s not our focus at C&C, and you can find much more intelligent and cogent analysis that side of the issue elsewhere. But there are some economic and geopolitical side effects of the refugee crisis that are worth thinking about.
See, not every country can deal with the influx of refugees in the same way. A place like Greece, for instance, is part of the Schengen area.
And that’s creating problems
If you’re scratching your head at what the Schengen area is, here’s a quick primer. It’s a collection of 26 countries in Europe where passport controls and border crossings are open. Many of the countries are a part of the EU, but not all of them (for instance, Switzerland is a part of the Schengen area but not the EU).
Open borders and the free movement of people from one part of the continent has been a central tenet of the EU for decades. The idea that labour and capital can cross borders without huge administrative headaches is a key principle for the whole project.
The problem is – as we’ve learned repeatedly in recent years – a lot the European project’s core ideas work fine in times of peace, stability and prosperity, but a lot less well when the situation turns more volatile. I suppose that’s true of lots of rules. But it seems a patchwork of different countries, cultures and traditions like Europe is particularly susceptible to coming apart at the seams in during volatile times.
The refugee crisis is exactly that.
And it seems that – behind the scenes at least – the idea of the Schengen area is being pushed to its limits.
Yesterday an EU council document called ‘Integrity of the Schengen Area’ was leaked. It was dated 1 December. So it’s safe to say it represents the most up to date thinking on the issue. Here are the key points (with my emphasis):
“Several member states have recently reintroduced temporarily internal border control pursuant to Articles 23-25 of the Schengen Borders Code. Under these provisions, a member state may not implement such controls for more than a total period of six months.
“A prolongation of this situation would require the adoption by the Council, upon a proposal from the Commission, of a recommendation in accordance with Article 26 of the Schengen Borders Code.
“Such recommendation may be adopted in exceptional circumstances to address a situation where a Schengen evaluation has identified persistent serious deficiencies relating to external border control and the measures referred to in Article 19a of the Schengen Borders Code are not effective.
“Where in such cases the overall functioning of the area without internal border control is put at risk, and insofar as the exceptional circumstances constitute a serious threat to public policy or internal security within the area without internal border control or within parts thereof, the period for the reintroduction of internal border control may be extended up to a total maximum of two years.”
What all that means, in really blunt terms, is that some nations are getting concerned at the ability of other Schengen area nations (like Greece) to process refugees safely.
Given that a weakness in one part of the Schengen area is a threat to all 26 nations – as once someone is in they can move around freely – that’s creating a problem. Clearly some nations want to close their borders, or introduce much tougher, non-Schengen restrictions. Those restrictions could be in place for two years, or perhaps longer.
The point of all this?
Well, to me it serves to highlight the central dynamic – or perhaps you’d say fatal flaw – at the heart of the whole European project. And that is: at critical moments, the interests of individual nations and the interests of the centralised EU superstate diverge. This leads to conflict, and tugs at the fabric of the whole project.
That’s true whether you’re talking about one nation needing radically different monetary and economic policy to the rest of Europe, or one nation enforcing different border controls to the rest of the community. It’s the same dynamic.
We’ll leave Britain out of this for now. But rest assured: Britain does have a place in this story. Our relationship with the EU has its own fatal flaws. We’ll be exploring them more in the coming weeks and months. Watch this space.
Category: Brexit