FOR a Dutchman driving his caravan to the Costa del Sol, the only thing to remind him that he had crossed borders used to be the successive text messages welcoming him to Belgium, France and Spain. That was before this summer’s migrant crisis—and last weekend’s terrorist attacks in Paris. Now the liberty to roam the 26 countries in the border-free Schengen zone, which Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, calls a “unique symbol of European integration”, is under greater threat than at any point since its inception.
Calls to curb borderless travel were already growing louder in August after Ayoub El Khazzani, a Moroccan national, carried an assault rifle across two borders on a Thalys train before attacking fellow passengers. In September Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, warned that without agreement on how to handle refugees they would grow louder still. The overwhelming scale of migrant arrivals led several countries, including Hungary, Slovenia, and ultimately Germany and Austria, temporarily to reintroduce border controls. Sweden, then getting 10,000 new arrivals each week, joined them on November 12th. The...Continue reading
Souce: Europe http://ift.tt/1I1oiNL
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