Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. I'm Stephen Carol and this is Here's Why, where we take one news story and explain it in just a few minutes with our experts here at Bloomberg. It's a central part of the vision of the European Union being able to cross borders freely. Schengen is an example of what it is. You have seamless travels around the Shangen Area. The decision that we have now finally taken to welcome Romania into our common Schengen Area was long.
Overdue and highly deserved.
So the passengers welcome to Bulgaria, Welcome to Shengen. This is a really historic moment for Bulgaria. The Shanngen Area, named after a village in Luxembourg on the border with France and Germany, covers twenty five of the EU's twenty seven member states, along with four neighboring countries, including Switzerland
and Norway. It's meant to mean that people can travel between countries and the zone without having to show their passport, but increased worries over migration and terrorism have seen some countries, including Germany and France, reintroduce border checks, so here's why the dream of a borderless Europe could be fading our Germany correspond to Oliver Krook joins me. Now for more, Oliver, a bit of context. First of all, how big a deal is the Shngen Agreement.
Yeah, Steven, I think this is an absolutely foundational idea for Europe and something that began really as a sort of economic alliance on coal and steel, and that has evolved through the decades to be something much much bigger and something that is developing more into a political block. And at the center of that is the freedom of movement of people. I mean, this is something that is not just also the EU. This is twenty nine countries across Europe and we're talking about an area that covers
four hundred and fifty million people. There is nothing like that in the world. There are, of course countries that are bigger than that where people can move freely, but there is no agreement like that where you can move seamlessly without border checks, without customs, without anything between that many countries. And it requires a huge amount of trust because we obviously know how sensitive an issue immigration is and always has been really through human history. So it's
a huge sort of achievement. It's continuing to expand. Croatia joined last year. And you know, if you live in the UK and or listening to this as I did, you will also have had the experience of living in a place with shangen and then without it. In the contrast, it's the kind of thing that you don't really necessarily think about until you don't have it anymore.
So who's taking a hiatus then from shangen and why? So?
Most recently and most dramatically, I think is Germany, which has now put on bird border checks on all nine of its land borders. Part of this is due to intense political pressures that there are within Germany, where you have the far right traditionally saying that they don't want any more immigrants and that wanted to cracking down, but you're hearing it also from the far left in Germany. It has also been put into focus by the fact that there have been a few sort of terror attacks.
One was committed by a sort of asylum seek or who was rejected and not deported, and so this was obviously a very emotive issue here in Germany. So there's an extension to some of the border checks that already existed with say poland the Czech Republic, Switzerland, but it's also been in stated since the beginning, since twenty fifteen with Austria. So today they've expanded it to France and
Mark into all of the land borders. They say that they've turned back thirty thousand people that shouldn't have been entering the country. They're trying to get a little bit of a boost from that. But from the Schultz government it was a significant step.
Is this a new idea that we would see European country suspending the rules around free travel and bringing back border controls.
So listen, you get it pretty regularly within Europe. It's always temporary measures, and we should say that the German ones are also technically temporary. There are only eight countries that are using it right now, and it's generally for a specific reason. Either there's been too many sort of illegal immigrants, or there's some concern over that terrorism threat. There's maybe a high profile event, say the Olympics in France.
They did it for that, but also Norway has done it because they're concerned about their critical infrastructure after the war with Russia and if there could be any infiltration there, so they've imposed them. Of course, there are a great many around COVID. But also this puts into sort of focus for the Shengen Area also the broader Shang'en border and trying to put sort of restrictions there so that
you don't get as many illegal immigrants there. And this is why, by the way, Turkey is such a key partner to the EU and to the Shengen Area.
Do countries get any blowback from the EU when they take steps like this.
Well, listen. Germany has got a lot of blowback overdoing this. It got reprimands from Donald Tusk, one of the bordering countries in Poland, which has exacerbated some frictions that were already there, basically saying that it's entirely unacceptable, calling for the sort of highest level of discussions over it. You've
heard the same thing from Austria. But you've also got a lot of praise from some of the eurosceptics, from Geared Wilders over in the Netherlands saying this is great, we should do this in the Netherlands or bond saying welcome to the club. And it's very significant because it's a government like Schultz's who is of course a Social Democrat and who's all the party and their coalition are
generally pro migration. For them to take this step really gives a lot of ammunition to some of the far right parties.
So, as you've mentioned, currently, these border controls being reintroduced are temporary measures. What's the risks that these temporary controls become permanent?
Well, this is the thing is that you can sort of continue to roll them over again and again, so they wouldn't really become really permanent per se that would obviously have a massive impact, but it's the fear of sort of effective permanence where you just keep rolling them out into sort of perpetuity. Like we mentioned earlier, there's been border checks between Austria and Germany since twenty fifteen, and the question is will it continue to roll it
over again and again and again. Germany has done this for six months and there's a six month increments. But again this is a risk that I could go further.
What's the big picture here, Alie, it's the Shagan area really in danger.
So what I think is really interesting is that the issue of migration, I think is in some ways a much bigger conversation and it speaks to really a question at the heart of Europe, and Schengen is kind of a proxy, i think, for much a bigger philosophical question, which is what is Europe? And that is a question that has been asked since the beginning of the EU
over decades. It's taken very many different forms, whether it's a focus on debt, the sovereign debt crisis that we had back in twenty ten, twenty eleven with Greece, now you have it sort of with immigration. And it comes at a time when within Europe you have a lot of euroskeptical parties that are closer to power than they've ever been in the past, whether it's in France, whether it's in Germany, within Italy as well, you have this
sort of the far right there. What is interesting is many of these euroskeptical parties, though they are closer to power, tend to be somewhat less skeptical. Right le Pen no longer really talks about Frexit, even the IFDA in Germany, the far right are not really talking about aggressively campaigning on leaving the EU. They might do a referendum, but these are all questions that were much more active in
the past. But I think as time goes on and Europe is confronted with blocks like China and the United States, they're going to have to make a choice of what Europe looks like going forward. And I think Drogy put it very well when he's kind of dealing with the sort of competitive this question in Europe. More broadly, he says Europe faces a choice between exit, paralysis or integration, and that is really the question that is before Europe today.
Thanks to our Germany correspondent Oliver Krook. For more explanations like this from our team of twenty seven hundred journalists and analysts around the world, search for Quicktake on the Bloomberg website or Bloomberg Business app. I'm Stephen Carroll. Here's why I'll be back next week with more. Thanks for listening.