Daniel Schade on Deutschland Heute: 'Border controls weaken Schengen'
Assistant Professor of European Studies and International Relations Daniel Schade was a guest on Deutschland Heute on Deutschlandfunk and spoke about the recent Schengen evaluation report by the European Commission.
In the interview he argues that:
- Countries who keep maintaining border controls significantly weaken the Schengen area. What makes it even worse is that all EU member states seem to accept this.
- “Schengen wouldn’t have any issues if the EU could agree on a fundamental reform of its migration system.”
- The recent enlargement of Schengen to Romania and Bulgaria illustrates some of the fundamental issues with Schengen: “Other countries such as Austria didn’t trust those countries enough to allow them to join. Now Bulgaria doesn’t even seem to trust Romania as they have now also introduced border controls towards Bulgaria.”
- The recent reporting on Schengen allowing Russians to evade sanctions is incorrect. Instead, it illustrates a current problem of different EU member states having different Visa policies, which allows Russian tourists to travel via open borders to countries which don’t want them.
Want to learn more?
Listen to the broadcast on Deutschlandfunk.de.