That Strasbourg’s tram network embraces the suburb of Kehl, just across the Rhine in Germany, is emblematic of what many Europeans feel is the most tangible benefit of the European Union: an end to tiresome frontier controls between neighbours.
D-line commuters are not hugely inconvenienced by the checks introduced after a knife attack by a Syrian asylum seeker (and a surge in support for Scholz’s far-right rivals). But the Social Democrat’s knee-jerk move to tighten the border has worried those who see another crack in the EU project, deepening distrust when nations might do better pulling together in order to prosper and stay safe in a disrupted but ever more connected world.
Nine years ago, Scholz’s predecessor Angela Merkel calmly told Germans “we’ve got this” as she opened Germany’s borders to a million refugees. Perhaps it took a woman raised on the dark side of the Berlin Wall so forcefully to favour humanity over frontiers, to keep faith with a U.S. president who urged the last Soviet leader to “tear down this wall”.
Today, walls are back fashion. Europeans of a certain age are about to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall, that miraculous night 35 years ago which shattered the hermetic boundary between East and West that had cast a shadow on our youth. But in the same week, Americans may re-elect the president who yelled “build the wall”. In Europe, Hungary has its own anti-migrant barrier. Far-right parties have taken power in Italy and topped elections in the Netherlands, France and now Austria. All speak with scorn of the EU’s “borderless” Schengen zone and seem forgetful of recent failures of passport controls to curb arrivals, whether of desperate asylum seekers or deadly viruses.
As traffic built up at eastern crossing points into Germany, a couple of Polish historians wrote
in a heartfelt piece for European newspapers of personal journeys out from behind the Iron Curtain and of their fears of Scholz’s plans to “take back control”. It’s a phrase that persuaded Britons to quit the EU altogether. Yet control of their post-Brexit borders has not stopped people coming to the UK to do jobs that need doing, though it has engendered the spectacle of Europhobe newspapers grumbling about passport queues at Europe’s borders. Freedom of movement is bad, it seems, except for people like us…
Indeed, whatever xenophobic fears opportunist politicians may foment,
surveys show that freedom of movement is top of the pops of EU benefits in most Europeans’ minds. So, leaders should beware the siren song of “take back control”. At best, adding border checks tends to create little but paperwork. At worst, like the sirens calling seafarers onto the rocks, a focus on closing frontiers may tempt ruin. Israelis have spent two decades building ever bigger barriers in hope of safety, shutting off the human contact between peoples that might – just maybe – help bring peace.
We Europeans took time to see that Westwalls and Maginot Lines did not keep us secure. Open borders, free trade, tourism, student exchanges and all the other modest achievements of the EU in helping folk really to get to know their neighbours have proven their worth.
Not only are sealed frontiers a sticking plaster that generally comes unstuck, by dealing only with symptoms, they distract us from tackling root problems – whether they be historic grudges and perceived injustices, or the inequalities of opportunity and security, often driven by the changing climate, that are drawing people towards Europe. Adding checks at Germany’s inner-European land borders betrays a lack of confidence in Berlin that Europeans together can tackle challenges, such as migration and the environment, to which answers lie rather in reaching out and sharing with a wider world.
His new border regime won praise from Italy’s far-right prime minister Giorgia Meloni. But Mr Scholz might do better listening to some other Italians – in
Gorizia. They’re hanging out the flags with their Slovenian neighbours to mark their shared turn as European Capital of Culture – and celebrating the invisible Schengen border that today runs through a city once cruelly disfigured by the barbed wire of the Iron Curtain.
He might also note how Ms Meloni is having to accept that her own frontiers are melting – literally. Switzerland has just
redrawn its Alpine border with Italy as global heating shrinks glaciers and shifts the ridge lines on which demarcation treaties are based. Look no further for an image of how fussing over frontiers while Europe fails to get its act together on climate change may be like, well, fiddling while Rome burns…
