Sarkozy-Berlusconi : A border control farce

When Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi announced plans to weaken passport-free travel in Europe this week, many onlookers concluded that the EU's most tangible achievement, the Schengen zone, was going the way of the single currency. This is unlikely. Like the euro, the Schengen area, where passport checks were abolished in 1995,, and which created a freedom to travel not seen since before the first world war – depends on each country managing its own affairs well and behaving sensibly during testing times. That is where the analogy ends. Under Schengen, countries have been able to reintroduce border controls for up to a month in an emergency. The euro has no such safety valve. What the French and Italian leaders want is the right to define an "emergency" in looser terms. Schengen's border code should be changed, they say, to allow checkpoints to go back up when large numbers of destitute migrants overrun a neighbouring state.
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