Sarkozy and Berlusconi's request to change the Schengen treaty shows them trapped by a backward-looking vision of Europe
There is a deep hypocrisy at the heart of the request by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy and the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, to make changes to the treaty that established the European Schengen area, within which people can travel without border checks. Addressed to the European council president, Herman Van Rompuy, and the European commission president, Jos� Manuel Barroso, the Sarkozy/Berlusconi letter is critical of European immigration policy and lobbies for greater powers for member states to control their borders.
The initial agreement was signed in 1985 at Schengen, a border village between Luxembourg, France and Germany. As a result, the checkpoints between five countries ? Germany, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Belgium ? no longer asked for passports to be shown, allowing the free flow of people and goods. This was a key moment in the development of the idea of European integration. Ten years later, Spain and Portugal joined and border controls were abolished completely. Now the Schengen area includes 25 European countries, including 22 members of the EU plus Norway, Iceland and Switzerland. Britain and Ireland have remained outside the Schengen area. Currently, member states are only allowed to introduce such checks where there is a threat to public order. The Sarkozy/Berlusconi letter invokes the idea of "exceptional difficulties" that require the border police to resume their posts.
We are living in the age of migration. It is not just that people are more mobile than at any other point in human history. Borders and checkpoints are also moving. The debate about Schengen is perhaps the best illustration of moving borders. While the integration of Europe has facilitated great freedom of movement inside the Schengen area, it has also hardened and given greater significance to the line between "integrated Europe" and the rest of the world. So, abolishing Europe's internal checkpoints had the result that the border of the Schengen zone took on a greater significance. However, the walls of fortress Europe have been reduced to ruins by the technologies of mass transportation and the accessibility of information through the internet and mobile phones. This is what lies behind the intervention of Sarkozy and Berlusconi.
The letter proposes an amendment to the agreement that would make it easier for Schengen member countries to introduce checks at their internal frontiers. Attempts at fortifying southern Europe against migrants from north Africa fail repeatedly. These requests seek to reactivate Europe's checkpoints that were decommissioned by the Schengen agreement in order to net or slow down people from the global south who try to move northwards. The "exceptional difficulties" that Sarkozy and Berlusconi are concerned with include the Arab revolution and also the impact of US-led military interventions. Meanwhile, Sarkozy has been enthusiastic in his support for the US and UK-backed military interventions from the air in Libya.
These recent developments contribute to what the American sociologist Doug Massey calls "anti-immigrant times". A rabble of political movements emerging on the extreme right provide the shrill and hateful backdrop while Sarkozy and Berlusconi try to make respectable arguments for the reactivation of the checkpoints of the 20th century. The hypocrisy of all this might be summed up in that, for them, freedom of movement is only desirable when it's enjoyed exclusively by white Europeans. But in a globalised culture the people of Tunisia, Iraq and Libya will simply not stay put regardless of the pronouncements of Europe's political leaders. If you bomb people, for example, they will run and seek refuge elsewhere ? it really is as simple as that.
The integration of Europe with all its attendant problems was at least a step towards a different kind of future. It opened up the possibility that a different conception of Europe might emerge, one that built on its rich history of being a permeable space, open to connections, realignments and, ultimately, the potential to develop a new vision of its place in the world. Is Europe to be eternally hostage to its past? Entrenched, fortified, phobic and unable to let go of the relics of nationalism and empire? Or is another kind of Europe possible? As Europe Day approaches, we need to hear other voices of dissent, such as the Forum of Concerned Citizens of Europe, who argue against the scapegoating of the stranger and for a politics of hope without fear. Sarkozy and Berlusconi serve as a reminder that Europe needs to be saved from itself.
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