On 14 June 1985, France, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany, pre-reunification) and the Benelux countries – Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg – signed an agreement in Schengen, a small town in Luxembourg, that would, eventually, see checks at their common borders abolished. The 40 years since have seen delays, amendments and debates, with the political football of freedom of movement in Europe rarely out of play.
"No more borders between Brest and Copenhagen, nor between Munich and Lisbon... This Europe has begun to see the light of day today, with the abolition of police and customs controls between five Common Market countries."
When journalists reported with solemnity the signing of the Schengen Agreement on 14 June, 1985, they were not to know that the disappearance of border controls was not to become a reality for another 10 years, when the Schengen Convention came into force – five years after that was signed.
From agreement to framework
The free movement of people was already enshrined in the 1957 Treaty of Rome, but this agreement only concerned workers. Signed in the village of Schengen in Luxembourg, the 1985 agreement aimed to go further: to do away with physical barriers, and the need to check the identity of people entering a given territory, heralding the freedom of movement that would come to characterise European unity.
However, this ideal of a continent without borders needed a legal framework, to reconcile the abolition of border controls with the national security of the participating states – which is where the 1990 Schengen Convention came in.
States with external borders had to demonstrate that they were in a position to control arrivals on Schengen territory on behalf of all the other member states of the European Union.
Other measures the Convention provided for were the possibility of temporarily reintroducing internal border controls, and the introduction of a Schengen Information System (SIS).
"With the disappearance of internal border controls, there was a technological need to pool data. The setting up of this file, which records alerts on people wanted by the police, stolen objects and people turned away from the Schengen area, is one of the reasons why it was necessary to delay the actual disappearance of borders from 1993 to 1995 – because it was a major undertaking," explains Tania Rapho, a researcher at the Institute for Public Law Studies at Paris-Saclay University.
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The entry into force of the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1999 also marked a turning point – making immigration control, visas, the right of asylum and judicial cooperation in civil matters, which until then had been the sole responsibility of intergovernmental cooperation, a common matter.
This was further supplemented by the Dublin Convention, signed on 15 June, 1990 – and coming into force on 1 September, 1997 – which determined which EU member state would be responsible for the examination of an application for asylum.
In 2000, Greece joined the Schengen zone, followed by Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden in 2001. In 2007-2008, it was the turn of Slovenia, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
The United Kingdom declined to join, citing security reasons – and subsequently left the EU in 2020. Cyprus, meanwhile, was unable to join due to not being able to control its borders due to Turkey's presence on the island. Ireland too is not a member of the zone, primarily due to its shared Common Travel Area with the UK.
By this year, the Schengen zone encompassed 29 countries – 25 from the EU, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.
An agreement under attack
Beginning in 2010, the Arab Spring uprisings prompted Tunisians, Libyans and Egyptians to flee for Europe, with the resulting growing tensions at external borders leading to conflict. Some EU member states – including France, in April 2011 – began reintroducing unilateral border controls, which the agreement allowed for on grounds of national security or public order. The discourse around the Schengen Agreement and how – and whether – it should be implemented was reignited.
This debate was intensified by the events of 2015, which saw both the European migrant crisis, and terrorist attacks on French, Swedish and Belgian soil. Five years later, the Covid-19 pandemic did the same, with EU states reintroducing border controls as a means of containment.
The case of Romania, which joined the Schengen zone on 1 January, 2025 after a 13-year wait, encapsulates the questions over the agreement that continue to arise, 40 years down the line.
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"Romania is a country that has recently shown the extent to which nationalist and national-populist forces have become important. But this same country was very, very active in obtaining its entry into Schengen. And it is a country in which a very large number of Romanian nationals take advantage of the right to free movement to work in other member states," says Jérôme Vignon, an advisor to the European think tank, the Jacques Delors Institute.
"So politicians defend the right to control borders, but appreciate the fact that these borders are not confining. That they allow us to live better than if we were completely closed in on ourselves," he added, explaining that populist and far-right parties find themselves denouncing the Schengen zone as a factor in migratory chaos, but wanting to be part of it.
"This sums up the tensions to come. We will continue to see populist pressure and posturing, which will unfortunately lead to internal border controls. But at the same time, if these decisions go too far, they risk jeopardising the real benefits. Every year, a million European citizens leave their country to work in another. And if these real rights are too obviously thwarted, problems will arise," said Vignon.
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Security limits
A major amendment to the Schengen Code was approved in 2024 – one which standardises temporary border closures. These can be for a maximum of two years, and are subject to approval by the European Commission and the Council of Ministers.
In theory, the return of border controls is highly regulated. In practice, however, they are being reinstated fairly freely.
"When you read the reasons given [for the return of controls], Austria, for example, believes that there is a continuing high level of irregular migration. Yet irregular arrivals fell considerably in 2024. The reality of arrivals is that there are around 200,000 in the whole of the European Union, which numbers 458 million people. In political discourse, migration is overused to justify internal border controls," says Rapho.
When Germany announced in September 2024 that it was reintroducing internal border controls, this was not an unprecedented move. The country has in fact reactivated these checks on several occasions since the migrant crisis of 2015.
For Rapho, it is also technically impossible to re-establish full control of all internal borders. "There are no longer the human resources, nor the infrastructure, nor the structural and technical resources. A state [would need to] choose to commit its budget to rebuilding its borders. But that seems very complicated to me."
She added: "The instrumentalisation of this issue by the extreme right within the European Union is threatening the Schengen area, at least in rhetoric. On paper, this raises questions about the durability of Schengen."
This article has been adapted from the original version in French.
