Back in the autumn of last year, in a train in Freilassing, a German police officer came through the carriage and asked for everyone’s passport. “Why are you checking all the passengers on this train?” I asked him, in German. “Because we check everyone at this border” “Sorry you don’t....
“The sleepy Luxembourg village of Schengen, the place where the European Union’s border-free zone bearing the village’s name was agreed in 1985, is a symbol of how joyous a borderless Europe can be. It is 1km from the centre of the village, across the bridge over the Mosel, to Germany,...
Henrik Enderlein and Jean Pisani-Ferry started to talk of an “economic Schengen” in the autumn of 2014, and Enderlein and Germany’s economy minister Gabriel were at it again today at a conference in the BMWi in Berlin. This is a really bad idea for four reasons, each of which I...
So the Spain-Gibraltar border dispute rumbles on. Queues at the land border to enter Gibraltar persist, and suggestions abound that Spain may introduce a charge to cross from Gibraltar into Spain. Meanwhile Tory MEP for the South West & Gibraltar, Ashley Fox, has called on the European Commission to take...
For me it was a journey by rail like any other: a Paris to Milan TGV between two work assignments. Until, between St Jean de Maurienne and Modane, stations near the border on the French side, four policemen passed through the train asking all passengers for passports. “Why,” I asked...
Better than no-one – S&D group MEP Claude Moraes has issued a statement, on behalf of the group, defending Schengen and criticising Sarkozy and Berlusconi. Moraes – rightly – says: The Sarkozy-Berlusconi demand for stricter border checks is ironic. It betrays their mistrust in each other’s ability to deal with...
So started an interesting exchange of views about the future of Schengen yesterday – my tweet, and then a reply from European Commisson spokesperson Koen Doens: http://twitter.com/jonworth/status/64751179715969024 @jonworth Disagree. Intelligent Cion w/ courage to c that governance may possibly have 2 b adapted 2 take account of exceptional circumst. —...
As I argued in my previous post, the British media is getting into a bit of a lather about the enlargement of the Schengen border free zone. Can the media not get to grips with the benefits of something, instead carrying on about how ‘illegal migration will increase’? But let’s...
BBC News Online has a good piece about the implications for tourism of the enlargement of the Schengen border free area in Europe, only one thing is missing: any discussion about Britain eventually joining the parts of Schengen that are actually useful to citizens. Essentially there are 3 elements of...
Once in a while there is a bout of introspection on Bluesky that the network will never take off roughly because text based social networks are somehow passé. See this from this morning for example. The same critique is levelled at Mastodon – that the struggles of that network to...
Yesterday was a public holiday in Berlin and I took a little cycle trip along the Teltowcanal all the way to the small town Kleinmachnow, sandwiched between Zehlendorf and Potsdam, south west of Berlin. The canal itself was partly the border between East and West Germany, and East and West...
This tweet of mine drew quite a lot of critique – why are you so sceptical, people asked. There is a pro-EU majority in the UK now. When Brexit really happens (i.e. when the transition period is over) people will see the damage that was done, and the UK can...