No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
The Schengen Area as a fair-weather project? A discursive analysis of solidarity
Abstract
Recently, critical voices have raised concerns that EU member states are unwilling to express solidarity and proclaimed that EU solidarity was dead. Surprisingly, the Schengen Area, as opposed to asylum policies, has been examined only sporadically in this context. Although there is overall agreement that solidarity is a necessary precondition for the functioning of Schengen cooperation, it has multiple meanings. Hence, theoretically drawing on the concept of solidarity and methodologically employing the Discourse Historical Approach (DHA), this study attempts to find out how solidarity is conceptualised in legislative and political discourse on Schengen cooperation. It does so by identifying the argumentation strategies of the main actors. The main findings are that whereas scholars tend to link solidarity to free movement and incoming refugees, legislative and political discourse emphasise external border controls. Indeed, this suggests that Schengen will remain resilient as long as its security is ensured, no matter the reimpositions of internal borders. These are perceived as a remedy to Schengen deficiencies rather than a problem per se. Also, in line with EU legislation, the interstate dimension of solidarity clearly prevails within Schengen.
... Most of them notice that although a refugee is a refugee by lawmeaning that the same rights should be guaranteed for all those entitled to obtain the refugee statusthe attitude of the EU is different if it is a Middle Eastern and African refugee or Ukrainian one. Broadly speaking, except for the Ukrainians, in the EU there is an increased attitude of substantial refusal to welcome refugees and unwillingness 'to express solidarity' (Votoupalová, 2022), also encouraged by the rise of populist movements. 1 Furthermore, the reception policies put in place to welcome the Ukrainian population remain mostly applicable to this specific case, without promoting a structural change of the EU migration law and reception policy. ...
The article explores the discursive representations of Syrian and Ukrainian refugees in the European Parliament (EP). The theoretical framework draws on Critical Securitisation Theory, pointing out the implicit hierarchies that affect the European Union (EU) reception policies in terms of race and gender. The main hypothesis is that a stigmatisation process based on race and gender affects the representation of refugees in the EU. Against this backdrop, the manuscript delves into how speech acts can either cast refugees as urgent threats or even facilitate the de-construction of the refugee as a threat. These are investigated through Computational Text-Analysis tools, such as Word- and Bigram-Frequency Analysis, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency test and Structural Topic Modelling. On the one hand, contrary to expectations of a securitisation of Syrian refugees primarily based on race, what emerges is also a process of de-personalisation that helps justify the anti-migration stand of some members of the EP (MEPs). On the other hand, the assumption that deconstruction of the refugee as a threat would mainly occur through an emphasis on cultural proximity between Ukrainian people and the EU is challenged. Instead, our analysis shows a gender-based victimisation of Ukrainian refugees, which contributes leading to protective measures being enacted by the EU.
This article explores the discourse-conceptual linkages between ‘Brexit’ and ‘crisis’ in European news media reporting about the UK referendum on leaving the European Union of 23 June 2016. The study examines media discourse about the Brexit vote in Austria, Germany, Poland and Sweden at the transformative moment in between the pre/after vote period. The conceptually-oriented critical discourse analysis shows how Brexit was not only constructed as an imaginary or a future crisis but also how its mediated visions were made real by recontextualising elements of various past social/political/economic crises. As is shown, such a strategy of discursively amalgamating the real and the imaginary, as well as the experienced/past and the expected/future, often allowed constructing Brexit as one of the most significant, critical occurrences of post-War Europe. Through the analysis, the article aims to show how wide and diverse the importance of ‘Brexit as crisis’ has been for European news media discourse. It also emphasises that while in the UK itself – including huge part of the UK traditional media – the critical nature of Brexit was often strategically downplayed, the wider European discourse would see it as a multifaceted ‘crisis’ of huge significance to both the present and the future of the EU, wider Europe and the world.
Recently, predictions about the potential end of Schengen cooperation have multiplied. The extraordinary number of refugees coming into the EU is generally understood as the root of the problems within Schengen because the external borders were not prepared to manage such a strain. At the same time, reimpositions of internal border controls seem to be blamed for the crisis of the Schengen project. However, the reasons why the controls were reimposed and their impact on Schengen have not been explored thoroughly. Hence, drawing on the theoretical concepts of crisis and employing the discourse-historical approach, this article investigates how the states which reimposed internal controls argue about their decision, how the EU leaders react and what the future of the Schengen cooperation looks like from their perspective. It follows from the analysis that although states admit that Schengen faces difficulties, they argue, referring to the Schengen acquis, that reimpositions are to be seen rather as a remedy for the Schengen crisis, not a threat to it as scholars may imply. Overall, the article shows how important it is to establish how the concept of crisis is discursively constructed.
This article considers how a major influx of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East during 2015 led to an EU-initiated collective securitisation of the Schengen space. The events of 2015 represented an internal crisis for the EU. This was not simply because migration stretched host country facilities and created political division within and between the member states. The uncoordinated reintroduction of border controls by some member states threatened the unravelling of the Schengen Agreement itself. The consequent security discourse which then gained currency in EU documents strongly underlined the need ‘to go back to normality’ and ‘to go back to Schengen’, not only to manage increasingly tense relations among member states but also to preserve what was seen as a core achievement of the EU. Contrary to the expectations of mainstream literature on securitisation, the policies enacted in response to the securitisation of Schengen have violated neither ‘normal politics’ of the EU nor existing or planned policies on migration and asylum despite the wide contestation of current EU migration and asylum practices. The article concludes that the normative dimension behind this collective securitisation should not be underestimated or too easily discounted.
This article argues that the question of free movement vs. exclusion within the European Union (EU) can be addressed satisfactorily only if we move away from the narrow state-centrism inherent in the current debate. What is required is to ‘open’ the state concept and examine the implications of state-society relations for EU policymaking. Once this is done, it can be seen that the exclusionist stance of the immigration policy and the essentially intergovernmental nature of the policymaking are due to an implicit contract between states and constituents implied by the concepts of nationality and citizenship. According to this perspective, the focus on the state or the political elite alone is too one-sided and misses the more complex factors bearing upon EU policymaking in this area.
This book aims to answer a number of questions on solidarity through the analysis of data from an original cross-national survey conducted within the TransSOL project. How developed are solidarity attitudes and practices among citizens of European member states? How diffused are these orientations when comparing various target groups, among them refugees/migrants, unemployed people, and the disabled? And how strongly are citizens engaged in helping people outside their country, both within and outside Europe? Which groups in the European citizenry are the strongest supporters of European solidarity, and which segments exhibit distance from European or global solidarity? Studies have focused on support for redistribution to the detriment of analyses on civic and interpersonal forms of solidarity. This chapter introduces the reader to the study of solidarity, presenting and discussing available knowledge and proposing conceptualisations, measurements and explanations.
Solidarity was once at the core of the European integration process. While originally intended to facilitate further integration, solidarity, in recent years, has often been associated with the intention of safeguarding existing policies. This article attempts to untangle this polysemous concept. It discusses the constitutional significance of solidarity, ultimately distinguishing four discernible dimensions in the EU context: transnational solidarity, inter-state solidarity, solidarity between a particular group of individuals and, finally, the institutional dimension. It unpacks the interaction between solidarity, loyalty and mutual trust, ascertaining them as interlocking principles. We focus on solidarity in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, revealing it to have legal effects which require compensatory action to support the application of supranational rules. Nonetheless, the principle can be realized in different ways, and it is far from certain whether the EU institutions are able to muster the political clout and the political legitimacy necessary to overcome divergences of opinion and perception. Against this backdrop, we sketch what EU institutions have undertaken to operationalize the principle in the ambit of EU asylum and border control policies to respond to the refugee policy crisis. The contributions to this special issue delve more deeply into the different aspects of this central theme.
Internal borders are a major but understudied site of crimmigration as most scholarship has focused on external borders (Van der Woude and Van Berlo, 2015). Internal borders were supposed to disappear under the principle of free movement within the European Union. But today we see EU member states policing the borders inside Schengen, checking identification, verifying passage, and regulating mobility in so-called ‘gray zones’. This article investigates this type of policing within the EU, focusing on the case of the Netherlands. It argues that the policing of internal borders is highly dependent upon discretionary power, a significant factor in the crimmigration process that we do not know enough about. Following Hawkins (1992, 2003), Schneider (1992), and Bushway and Forst (2013) on discretion and discretionary decision-making, we examine the interaction between decisions by law-makers and policy-makers that create discretionary space for law enforcement officials on the ground, and the way in which these street-level bureaucrats perceive the discretionary space attributed to them. By zeroing in on the interaction between these two actors, we aim to find the discretionary decision that matters the most in terms of explaining the crimmigration practices, offering a more holistic and interdisciplinary approach to border control. We discuss the implications of this power and the consequences for the European Project as such.
In the wake of the refugee crisis and the global war on terrorism, many European countries are revising their border control strategies. Despite having signed the Schengen Agreement, as a result of which all forms of internal border control within a large section of Europe have been abolished, many countries are exploring the legal possibilities to monitor cross-border mobility. By focusing on the case of the Netherlands, this article aims to assess one of these possibilities: carrying out so-called Schengen proof spot checks in the 20-km zone around the land borders with Belgium and Germany. In this article we aim to examine whether the Dutch Mobile Security Monitor is exercised justly and fairly. We will assess street-level discretionary decision making by officers of the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee, the Dutch border police organization responsible for carrying out the MSM, through the sociolegal lens of the principle of nonmisuse of competence also known as detournement de pouvoir. Although the MSM is meant as an instrument of immigration control, based on our extensive qualitative fieldwork this article will show a different picture. © 2017 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Using the example of Eurodac our paper concentrates on the digitization of European border controls. Eurodac, an information, communication and control technology operates by means of a European database, in which the fingerprints of asylum seekers and irregular migrants are stored. Eurodac works as a so-called Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) and is applied within the areas where the rules of the Dublin II regulation are applicable. By using the Eurodac database to reconstruct the one and only responsible Member State per asylum application Dublin II regulates the mobility of non-EU-citizens without a valid visa within the EU. We understand the present paper as an ethnographic contribution to the understanding of the socio-technological emergence of the digital border and the digitization of border conflicts. With recourse to Bruno Latour’s concepts of “blackboxing” and “immutable mobiles” we develop an analysis that allows us to describe some exemplary actor-networks of Eurodac following our multi-sited fieldwork. In this connection, we have localized the current crisis of the Schengen border regime at three different but interconnected spots: From Athens via Igoumenitsa to Bari and from there back and forth into European control centers.
The article aims at presenting the social and economic dimension of Schengen regulations, leaving aside its impact on cross-border co-operation. It outlines the legal framework of the Schengen acquis and its impact on Ukrainian-Polish relations in the examined fields. The tightening of these relations is important in view of Ukraine's aim to form a free trade area with the EU and to join the EU at some future point.
Due to the refugee crisis, the Proposal made by the Commission in December 2015 to create a European Border and Coast Guard (EBCG) will soon become legislation adopted in record time with a large consensus. Wrongly considered as an ambitious solution, it is based on highly questionable principles. Firstly, it transforms the EBCG Agency into the Chief Executive Officer of the Member States authorities in charge of border controls. This is a welcome new model because of the current powerlessness of Frontex, but it does not guarantee the independence towards Member States of this new Agency that will remain intergovernmental. In reality, the Proposal does not create in the true sense an EBGC that will be nothing more than a legal fiction while its misleading title will keep going the confusion between the numerous concepts used in the European borders policy. Secondly, although the Commission pretends to share border controls between the EU and its Member States, the latter will remain responsible for their implementation which is in contradiction with the principle of solidarity, with the consequence that the funding of the European borders policy will remain an unsolved problem. Actually, the Proposal follows the old logic of a supposed principle of responsibility and gives it the priority over the necessary solidarity in violation of the Treaty and in contradiction with the new orientation given by the Commission to the asylum policy. The EBGC could be a short-term solution to the situation at the Greek borders, but it will not solve the structural problem of border controls in the EU that requires a centralised agency for which there is no legal basis in the Treaty.
Gravity models (equations) of trade belong among the most successful empirical tools in the modern economics since their first economic applications in the yearly 1960s. They assume that bilateral trade is directly proportional to “economic sizes” (usually described in terms of GDP or income) of both trading partners and inversely proportional to their distance. The aim of this study was to examine Germany’s latest (2012) yearly aggregate exports to its major international partners by a gravity equation without and with selected trade frictions including a geographical adjacency (the so called border effect), an influence of the same or different currency (Euro), and a location in the Schengen Area, the zone of a free movement of persons. Gravity models both without and with selected trade frictions fitted the data well, while the model with frictions performed significantly better. The adjacency was found the most important single trade friction, the location in the Schengen Area appeared to be the least important friction (but it was still statistically significant). Other feasible trade frictions, such as border length, a location in Europe or democracy index were examined too, but their effect on the trade was rather negligible. A possible explanation of the border effect, based on information deficiency, is included in the study as well. Furthermore, it was observed that yearly Germany’s exports data are susceptible to large year-to-year fluctuations especially for countries with low imports. Therefore, using averaged data over five or ten years long periods might be more appropriate.
The European Union is facing multiple crises: the euro and sovereign debt crisis puts into question its economic and social cohesion as well as the rules of coexistence within the Economic and Monetary Union; the refugee crisis brought to the fore a high degree of disagreement among member states as to the duties of mutual solidarity and assistance; Brexit highlighted the need to continuously justify EU membership (Britain being the most evident, but not at all the only case in which public opinion sees membership with deep scepticism), and to address the social and economic roots of dissatisfaction with the EU – inasmuch as EU-internal, economically motivated migration has been one of the key issues of the ‘leave’ campaign; the security crisis put into question the Schengen agreement and the mutual trust between member states in security issues. The political conundrum currently challenging the EU calls for reflection on what went wrong with the process of European integration in the first place. The essay offers a possible diagnosis and traces a number of scenarios for the future development of the European Union.
This Brief sheds light on the motivation of humanitarian intervention from a theoretical and empirical point of view. An in-depth analysis of the theoretical arguments surrounding the issue of a legitimate motivation for humanitarian intervention demonstrate to what extent either altruism or national/self-interests are considered a righteous stimulus. The question about what constitutes a just intervention has been at the core of debates in Just War Theory for centuries. In particular in regards to humanitarian intervention it is oftentimes difficult to define the criteria for a righteous intervention. More than in conventional military interventions, the motivation and intention behind humanitarian intervention is a crucial factor. Whether the humanitarian intervention cases of the post-Cold War era were driven by altruistic or by self-interested considerations is a question is covered within and enables a comprehensive and holistic evaluation of the question of what motivates Western democracies to intervene or to abstain from intervention in humanitarian crises.
Cette thèse prend comme point de départ l’étude d’un service de police, la Police Aux Frontières (PAF) en lien avec la construction européenne. En nous inspirant de la sociologie de l’État nous avons élaboré des catégories analytiques à même de rendre compte de l’évolution concomitante de cette police et des « régimes de circulation » national et européen. Le « régime de circulation » est défini grâce aux catégories rokanienne de l’analyse de l’État : il est lié à un « centre politique » et définit un territoire pertinent de circulation et les caractéristiques des personnes habilitées à s’y déplacer. La PAF est caractérisée comme une police des déplacements, elle met en jeu certaines des formes de pouvoir étatique décrite par Michel Foucault, qui met l’accent sur la capacité de l’État à contrôler à distance les activités des individus. Le régime de circulation national repose depuis 1974 sur le principe de la frontière comme lieu légitime et efficace des contrôles des déplacements des personnes et des déviances. Il entre en contradiction avec celui du régime de circulation européen qui, à partir de 1985, repose sur le principe de libre franchissement des frontières internes. La PAF, administration marginale, connaît alors un développement sans précédent de ses effectifs, de ses tâches et de son rôle dans l’élaboration du régime de circulation. Elle gère les interactions et les contradictions entre le régime de circulation national et européen. La PAF apparaît à la fois comme un acteur professionnel à même de défendre une extension des limites de sa « juridiction » mais également un acteur administratif intervenant dans l’élaboration des régimes de circulation.
The core idea of this special issue is to investigate the link between identity and solidarity in the foreign policy of members of the European Union (EU).1 The term ‘identity’ has various definitions in external relations. In a classical way, one may state that ‘nationhood and national identity represent necessary myths which underpin foreign policy. They constitute the distinction between the “national community” which the government represents abroad and the foreigners with whom it deals’ (Wallace, 1991: 66). In a constructivist understanding, the self is thus defined in relation to a specific other. Therefore, identity is not given; it is considered as the process of self-identification of the individuals in a group (Bloom, 1990) or an‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 1983). In this vein, solidarity represents one of the forms of expression of foreign policy identities. Like the self, it is subject to relative evolution and redefinition.
The Treaties on which the EU is founded hardly ever mention the notion of solidarity between citizens. The type of solidarity owed according to the terms of the Treaties mostly concerns the relationship between Member States. This also holds true in the chapter providing the legal basis for the EU’s migration policies. The present article discusses the concept of solidarity in the Dublin System for determining the State responsible for examining an application for asylum. This case is especially critical because the Dublin System has given rise to sharp conflicts pertaining to interstate solidarity. The Dublin example demonstrates that in EU law the principle of solidarity operates in a field of tension between a high degree of supranational integration and, simultaneously, a high degree of heterogeneity among its Member States. It aims to compensate an asymmetric distribution of burdens generated by further steps on the supranational path of European integration.
This special issue illustrates that the securitisation of migration is not a linear process but a spiralling phenomenon, which involves different actors, and their policies, practices and narratives, in a spiralling progression that both self-fulfils and reinforces migration-security nexus’ dynamics. By proposing a cognitive ontology to understand the social construction of migration as a security threat, the introduction to this special issue proposes a categorisation of cognitions, mandates, constituencies and interests of state and non-state actors. Through a dichotomisation of these categories, it is possible to clarify how and why they either socially construct or deconstruct migration as a threat. In particular, the special issue identifies in prejudicial cognitions one of the main reasons for which a variety of actors enact practices and produce narratives that contribute to both securitising migration and reinforcing its nexus with crime, and the consequent social construction of ‘migration crises’. The different contributions to this special issue prove the arguments here exposed with a different analysis of how migration has been dealt with at either governmental or non-governmental levels.
The experience of a migration crisis (2015 and 2016) on the edge of Schengen and EU territory has demonstrated two divergent development perspectives. From both the EU and its Member States, there has been increasing demand to protect the EU’s external borders. This requires trust in both national and EU (Frontex) authorities that are supposed to be the guardians of national and European security. At the same time, however, negative sentiments towards migrants have increased and continue to arise from different cultural backgrounds within Member States. These diverging perspectives are struggling to develop hand in hand with the current and requested role of the Frontex agency. There are rising tensions concerning the legality of measures introduced on external borders in order to protect the EU territory effectively. There is enormous disparity between the requested norms and standards and EU and international law, which mirrors the strong anti-migrant sentiment within CEE Member States. This paper analyses the disparity between EU and international norms with the measures being introduced on the EU’s external border with the Western Balkan states. It also aims to analyze the medium-term impact of this disparity at a national and EU level from the perspective of efficiency, solidarity and legality. The migrant influx may be addressed as an example of crisis management in the context of how these three principles of EU law are implemented within CEE Member States as a part of the (political, geographical and cultural) map of Europe.
There is an inescapable relationship between the existence of migration movements and the resulting policies which are adopted by the authorities of the area concerned towards encouraging these movements, or more commonly towards attempting to control or to reduce them. This in turn means that the migration researcher must not only look at the effects of policy and changes in policy, important though this is, but must also attempt to understand the changing political factors which fuel the formation of policy. This paper aims to bring together some of the wide variety of policy issues and responses which may be observed in Europe at the present time and in the recent past, and in particular to make an assessment of the approaches being taken by the European Union member states as a whole, and also by the so-called Schengen group of member states. This article also attempts to look at the perceptions of these policies and their effects from the point of view of both the “western” and the “eastern” European countries, as migration policy issues are rarely onesided. In conclusion, it considers some of the research issues and problems which are raised by geographers and others working in this area, difficulties which might be implied by our possibly flippant title, “Keeping Up with Schengen.”
Initial literature on the ‘European refugee crisis’ discerned intergovernmental tendencies in its management. This paper examines whether neofunctionalism may be able to explain a major case of ‘European refugee crisis’ policy-making, the negotiations on the European Border and Coast Guard regulation. We argue, somewhat counterintuitively, that the theory considerably furthers our respective understanding. The crisis acted as a catalyst exposing the weaknesses of a system that pitted a supranational Schengen against a largely intergovernmental external border regime, notwithstanding a developing Frontex. These dysfunctionalities have been widely fostered by both national and supranational decision-makers shrinking from the significant economic, political and sunk costs of Schengen disintegration, thus ruling out the possibility for spillback. Additionally, further integration was substantially nurtured by supranational agency, ‘socialized’ national civil servants, transnational NGOs and European business associations.
Policymakers conceptualize the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) as a ‘common area of protection and solidarity’. And yet, the absence of solidarity and fair-sharing in the administrative governance of the policy is glaringly salient. Against this backdrop, this article explores Article 80 TFEU, establishing the principle of ‘solidarity and fair-sharing of responsibility’. This analysis reveals it to be a principle that is structural to the EU asylum policy, dictates a certain ‘quality’ in the co-operation of the different actors, and affects the goal of the policy. To do this, after outlining the initial implementation design of the asylum policy, I examine ‘shifts’ in its administration modes, focusing on developments in responsibility-assignation, practical cooperation and EU funding. The analysis covers developments prompted by the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’, such as the emergency intra-EU relocation schemes, the emergence of new funding lines and the enhancement in the operational role of EU agencies. This article argues that, despite the rhetoric surrounding the solidarity principle, rather than being structurally embedded in the system’s administration modes, it remains emergency-driven. In this sense, the implementation design fails both to attain ‘fair sharing’, as well as to respond to what are essentially structural, rather than exceptional needs.
This article looks at securitization/humanitarianization dynamics in the EU external sea borders to track and critique the substantial transformation of the role played by human rights in the Mediterranean. Mapping the evolution of maritime engagement up to the ‘refugee crisis’, it is revealed how the invocation of human rights serves paradoxically to curtail (migrants') human rights, justifying interdiction (‘to save lives’), and impeding access to safety in Europe. The result is a double reification of ‘boat migrants’ as threats to border security and as victims of smuggling/trafficking. Through a narrative of ‘rescue’, interdiction is laundered into an ethically sustainable strategy of border governance. Instead of being considered a problematic (potentially lethal) means of control, it is re-defined into a life-saving device. The ensuing ‘rescue-through-interdiction’/‘rescue-without-protection’ paradigm alters the nature of human rights, which, rather than functioning as a check on interdiction, end up co-opted as another securitization/humanitarianization tool.
Building on Moravcsik’s Liberal Intergovernmentalism, I offer an explanation of the non-decision
on permanent EU refugee quotas. Some traditionally influential Member States in EU asylum
politics, such as Germany, Austria and Sweden, received large numbers of refugees and faced
strong domestic pressures to engage other Member States in responsibility-sharing. Yet,
governments of Member States with small application numbers (among whom several Eastern
European governments were particularly vocal) had incentives to undercut responsibility-sharing
to avoid similar pressures. Having a better alternative to the potentially negotiated agreement,
these governments successfully blocked the introduction of permanent refugee quotas. Besides
explaining the absence of an effective response to one of the root causes of the asylum crisis
(unequal strains) through asymmetrical interdependence, the article further develops Liberal
Intergovernmentalist arguments and shows how national electorates influence positions taken by
governments at the EU level when they are mobilized by right-wing populist parties.
The Schengen Agreement is an important milestone in the European integration process. The purpose is to facilitate the flow of goods, services, and persons across intra-European borders. How successful is it in achieving this goal? We apply an econometric gravity analysis to bilateral trade. Unlike earlier analysis, we acknowledge that Schengen treats different country pairs differently, depending on their relative geographical location. Moreover, we find it crucial to carefully control for other elements of European integration such as membership in the customs union, the single market or the currency union, and to factor in countries' trade with themselves. Schengen has boosted trade by about 2.81 per cent on average, on top of the EU's trade effects (equivalent to a drop in tariffs between 0.46 and 1.02 percentage points). Trade creation effects for services are stronger than for goods, but estimates feature larger parameter uncertainty. Peripheral countries benefit more than central ones. Other aspects of EU integration matter much more for trade than Schengen.
The article analyses the historical understanding of the term ‘solidarity’ in the context of the Schengen process, which started in the 1980s and remains relevant until today. During this time, the Schengen Area grew from encompassing five Western European countries to 26 member-states across the whole continent. In this context, the term ‘solidarity’ was referred to frequently in official documents, in speeches or in the media – despite the fact that the term was not at all central at the time of foundation. It is important to note, however, that during the process of enlargement, the meaning of the term ‘solidarity’ changed repeatedly. First meant to denote solidarity between all the European peoples, in the Western European Union it also referred to the reconciliation of European peoples after the Second World War. In the 1990s, the official understanding of solidarity concerning Schengen shifted to describe an effective inter-state cooperation among the EU member-states. In the last years, the term solidarity was most evoked in the call for an even burden-sharing within the European Union. All these different understandings have one aspect in common: they focus on the internal dimension of European solidarity. However, during the entire Schengen process, the term ‘solidarity’ was also applied in another, an external, global dimension, to call for humanitarian support towards refugees reaching the Schengen Area from anywhere in the world. The article argues that the term ‘solidarity’ must hence be looked at as a political concept and not a neutral, analytic term. Critical regard for the current political interests as well as the concrete historical framework are crucial for any academic discussion of European solidarity. The categories of inclusion and exclusion especially must be core aspects when analysing the term ‘solidarity’ historically.
This contribution explains the European asylum policy crisis from three structural weaknesses of the Common European Asylum System: its reliance on coercion within the EU, its unrealistic expectations of what borders can achieve and the premise of prohibition of refugee movement in its external dimension. The article then critically reviews the proposals that the EU has submitted since the publication of the European Migration Agenda in May 2015, in the light of recent developments.
This contribution argues that the three dominant approaches to European integration cannot fully explain why the two most recent crises of the European Union (EU) resulted in very different outcomes. Liberal intergovernmentalism and neofunctionalism can account for why the euro crisis resulted in more integration, but fail to explain why the EU has been stuck in a stalemate in the Schengen crisis. With regard to postfunctionalism, it is the other way around. To solve the puzzle, we have to consider that depoliticization through supranational delegation during the euro crisis has ultimately led to more, not less politicization. Moreover, both crises were about identity politics. Political controversies over the euro crisis have centred predominantly on questions of order, i.e., what constitutes Europe as a community and how much solidarity members of the community owe to each other under which conditions. The mass influx of migrants and refugees changed identity politics, since Eurosceptic populist parties framed the Schengen crisis in terms of borders, advocating for an exclusionary ‘fortress Europe.’ In contrary of a more inclusionary discourse, the dominance of exclusionary positions in the politicization of EU affairs has impaired an upgrading of the common European interest in the Schengen crisis.
This article contributes to the discussion about border security in the Schengen Area, particularly regarding the dramatic increase of illegal immigration since 2013. It first outlines the competency of the European Union regarding protection of Schengen's external borders and identifies the objectives of eu policies. The article goes on to critically analyse the concept of 'eu Integrated Border Management,' showing that it is hardly applicable to strategic policy making. There is no official, comprehensive and up-to-date definition of the concept; moreover, it is used inconsistently across eu political and legal documents. Therefore, the article argues that the concept of a border security system should be adopted as both a framework for analysis and a conceptual structure for eu policymaking. The final section of the article defines the functions of a border security system as follows. In the area of prevention there are functions of (1) deterrence of the potential flow and (2) prevention of the attempted flow; in the area of interdiction there is the located function of (3) interdiction of the immediate attempted flow at the borders, either at border crossing points or in between them; lastly, in the area of removal, there are functions of (4) apprehension of the illegal flow and (5) apprehension of the illegal population for the purpose of (6) removal of these unauthorised immigrants or residents from the protected territory.
Social solidarity is important in many areas of our lives, or at least in how we wish our lives to be. Family and kinship relationships, community life, trade union activity and the identity politics of new social movements are just some of the numerous ways in which social solidarity features in contemporary social arrangements. This book explores the way in which people strive to come together and act as a coherent, unified force. It considers the arguments of those who claim that solidarity is increasingly fragile, and of those who are concerned with revitalizing solidarities in our unsettled societies. The author shows how social change can be understood in the contexts of the limitations as well as the potential of the pursuit of solidarity, drawing on research findings on social relationships in families, communities, and the post-communist world. Written with undergraduate students and researchers in mind, this text should be of value to those studying social theory, and family, community or comparative sociology.
This paper discusses the contribution made by historians, particularly historians of European integration, to study of the problem of migration. In particular, it examines the most important historiographical debates on this topic until today. It analyses the main interpretations of the origins of the freedom of movement for Community workers and, later, for all citizens. It also summarises the state-of-the-art historical research on the complex relationships between freedom of movement and European social policy. Moreover, it gives accounts of the main historiographical approaches to the role played by restrictive migration policies on the external relations and enlargement strategies of the European Communities. Lastly, it explores the most authoritative theories about the origins and impact of the Schengen system. The paper concludes that European integration historians' research on the problem of migration has been rich and insightful, but that it now urgently needs new ideas and new methodologies.
The Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) touches upon two fundamental issues: on the one hand the national sovereignty and the State’s capacity to control and to manage its territory and its population, and on the other hand the protection of fundamental human rights and civil liberties. Thus, the balance between liberty and security is the core of the AFSJ. Scholars have argued that the lack of parliamentary accountability and control of home affairs policies has led to an insufficient standard of human protection. However, recent developments in this area bought by the treaty of Lisbon conferred to national parliaments a special role in AFSJ polices (Article 69, Title V of TFEU). They should ensure that legislative initiatives in relation to judicial cooperation in criminal matters and to police cooperation Chaps 4-5 comply with the principle of subsidiarity. The question that this paper tries to answer is to what extent the involvement of national parliaments in European policies brings a more humanitarian approach to the AFSJ? To do so, the paper relies on two theoretical concepts: that of frame and that of parliamentary scrutiny and one case study: the reform of the Schengen agreements proposed by the European Commission in September 2011. In a comparative perspective the paper analyzes how the French and the Italian parliamentarians scrutinized the reform mentioned above and what role do they play in the decision-making process.
Police and Customs Cooperation Centres (PCCCs) have been established throughout the Schengen area as an important institution reinforcing mechanisms and procedures of cross-border law enforcement cooperation. Since the first PCCC became operational in Offenburg in 1999, about 40 centres have emerged, performing various functions and tasks in the area of internal security and law enforcement and constituting a valuable local tool of direct cross-border cooperation. In the reflection period preceding the 2009 Stockholm Programme, the so-called Future Group (High Level Advisory Group on EU Internal Security) suggested that the EU should establish a model of PCCC applicable to all member states and serving as ‘real police-customs centres of crisis management capable of handling events on an international scale.’ This chapter seeks to verify the above proposal and to reflect further on the importance of PCCCs for internal security of the EU and for cross-border cooperation in the Schengen zone. Several PCCCs will be analysed in order to extract similarities and differences as functional and institutional prerequisites for the elaboration of a framework PCCC. The evaluation of the role that PCCCs perform in everyday cross-border police cooperation will be juxtaposed with new instruments of Schengen governance, adopted in October 2013, particularly new provisions on common rules on the temporary reintroduction of border control at internal borders.
For the past two decades, the Member States of the European Union (EU) have been developing cooperation in the sphere of consular affairs. As crises of the Arab Spring highlighted, citizens of the Union are increasingly vulnerable and in need of protection globally, prompting the Member States to strengthen common provisions, and the EU institutions developing informal roles in protection of EU citizens. European visa policy, on the other hand, emerged as a result of the expanding Schengen area. The removal of internal borders led to creation of common management of external borders, of which visa policy has become an essential part. For example, in the Eastern neighbourhood, visa policy is increasingly linked to EU conditionality, with third countries implementing far-reaching public security and border management reforms, thus externalising the borders of Fortress Europe to third countries and their institutions before a process of visa liberalisation can take place. This chapter will analyse the nature of Europe’s shifting borders as a result of increasing cooperation in consular affairs, namely in consular protection and visa policy. On one hand, the EU’s cooperation in consular protection has highlighted the need to provide security to EU citizens across the globe, whilst, on the other, EU’s visa policy is increasingly shifting the security of its external borders to its neighbourhood and beyond. In both instances, third countries are becoming the scenes of European border externalisation and management, albeit, for two different reasons-to protect EU citizens, and to manage the flow of migrants into Europe.
The series of adverse shocks of both economic and political character that Europe has suffered since 2008, the last of them coming from the Brexit referendum, revealed numerous institutional gaps and asymmetries in the EU integration architecture. They originate from the voluntary nature of the EU project and the necessity to obtain unanimous approval of all member states to take new integration steps. To increase the resilience of the EU project against current and future shocks, its major institutional gaps and asymmetries should be addressed as quickly as possible. In this paper, we use the theory of fiscal federalism and subsidiarity principle to set the agenda of the EU reform. This includes the identification of areas such as completing the EMU and Schengen projects, foreign, security, and defence policies, environmental and climate change policies where further integration can offer substantial returns to scale and better provisions of global and pan-European public goods. On the other hand, there are also areas such as agriculture policy, products, services and labour standards, and fiscal surveillance rules, where deregulation in favour of market forces could ease business environment and make EU regulations less bureaucratic. Developing integration beyond the traditional economic sphere will also have an impact on the size of the EU budget, balance of power between the EU governing bodies (a bigger role of the European Parliament) and the democratic legitimacy of the EU project.
The adoption of EU Regulation 2016/1624 is an endeavour to widen the scope of existing measures shaping a fully-fledged EU integrated border policy. This article discusses key innovations and ambiguities in the text in the light of the debate regarding the still lacking supranational model. EU security has become the driving factor of border management system. The article argues that the respect for the principle of institutional balance is threatened by this Regulation as well as the principles of the rule of law and democratic control, notably at national level.
This paper studies the role of cross-border interactions and public spaces in the local mediation of national conflicts in three Polish-German border towns. It draws on Luc Boltanski’s pragmatic sociology in order to address questions raised in the recent literature on urban conflict and borders. Our analysis traces transformations under Schengen in relation to Boltanski’s concepts of uncertainty, justification and tests. We investigate ordinary inhabitants’ everyday experiences of cross-border relations through different types of spatial practices and place-making strategies in the context of a shifting border. Recent transformations have started to challenge a longstanding situation of ‘arrested conflict’ rooted in blocked local networks, disconnected from supranational discourses of cooperation.