The Temporary Reintroduction of Border Controls Inside the Schengen Area: Towards a Spatial Perspective

In 2015 several EU Member States have chosen to reintroduce border controls. Oftentimes, these decision took place unilaterally. The daily functioning of border regions is highly affected by these decisions. “The process of cross-border integration is de facto temporarily interrupted.” (p. 3). Whereas several studies already highlighted the economic consequences of this temporal re-establishment of border controls, this study intends to analyze the spatial significance of this decision.

The authors summarize four “Conceptual tools for analyzing the reintroduction of border controls in the Schengen Area”. In the first paragraph entitled “The reintroduction of border controls: the dilemma of “managing” mobility and security together”, the 21st century dilemma between security requirements of controlling mobility and spatial mobility as intended by the Schengen Agreements is highlighted. The authors conclude that the fact that security and mobility are anchored at different levels in the EU are adding to the complexity of this dilemma. In the second paragraph on “Borders as a power relationship”, the emphasis I son the ambivalence of borders and the need to analyze power relationships. The “mutually reinforcing” (Sparke 2005) concepts of de/re-territorialization and de/re-bordering are introduced. In the part on “Border controls: implementing “selective permeability” and transforming borders into “filters” or “membranes”” the binary concept of opening/closing is questioned. Recent notions such as the idea of borders as “asymmetric membranes” (Hedetoft 2003), the notion of “selective permeability” (Popescu 2012) and the word “plasticity” used by Bernes (2014) are presented in order to describe the functioning of bordering processes. In the paragraph on “The legitimacy of borders”, the authors point out that this legitimacy is expressed in different terms and highlight the procedural character of borders.

This literature review is then applied to the present situation. The methodology is as follows: a semi-directed expert interview (2016) with a chief economist of the Chamber of Commerce in Luxembourg, the transcript of discussions from the annual meeting of the European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation platform (EGTC) (2016), and the EGTC monitoring report from 2016 are analyzed in order to understand the spatial significance of the re-establishment of border controls.

In the empirical part entitled “Between physical and mental barriers: how do cross-border areas address the reintroduction of border controls?” three interpretations of the current situation are presented:

• “The reintroduction of border controls in the Greater Region: questioning the concept of “filter””: in case of an asymmetric reintroduction of border controls (as it was the case in the Greater Region with France and Germany), the concept of a filter is useful. It does however not reflect the entire situation. A focus on legitimacy shows how levels of governance can conflict one another.
• “Between dismay and disbelief: experts’ landmarks are questioned”: experts interviewed and observed, be they working on the local, regional, national or European level, all expressed their “concern” and “fear” in the light of the consequences of the temporary reintroduction of border controls for the future of the EU.
• “The differentiated consequences of reintroduced border controls”: the effects of the re-establishment of border controls on the structural, the functional, the institutional and the ideal dimension (these four categories are proposed by Durand 2014 in order to analyze cross-border integration) are elaborated based on the empirical material.

Several statements are presented to back up these three interpretations.

The reintroduction of border controls unbalances the process of European integration. This re-establishment shows that borders “remain a marker of identity and security” (p. 13). In the long term member States should agree on the application of the location and the security function of the borders.