When five Western European states signed the Schengen Agreement in June 1985, they launched what would later be hailed as a doctrine in European integration: the gradual abolition of internal border controls. Forty years later, Schengen has become a sacred pillar of the EU’s borderless ideal and a showcase of supranational governance.
But Schengen’s reality is far more nuanced than its myth. For all its celebration in Brussels circles these days, it is not a large scale shared European good in practice. Schengen is, above all, a technocratic luxury, disproportionately used and defended by what David Goodhart famously called the ‘Anywheres’: mobile, university-educated, transnational professionals who feel at home in multiple countries and cultures. For them, home is where the WiFi connects automatically. By contrast, the ‘Somewheres,’ those rooted in one place, one culture, and one national identity, make up the vast majority of Europe’s population. They live in the provinces, suburbs, and post-industrial towns. They do not live transnational lives, nor do they benefit directly from open borders. For them, Schengen is not the daily excitement at any airport but a distant abstraction. Worse, it often symbolises loss: of control, of order, and of political voice.
Every day, only 3.5 million people cross internal borders within the Schengen Area. In a Union of over 450 million inhabitants, that number reveals how narrow and stratified the benefit actually is: it concerns only 0.78% of the population of all Member States, less than 1 % of the overall population. The vast majority of citizens, especially the Somewheres, rarely cross borders at all, except for family holidays or short trips. According to Eurostat, only 11% of EU citizens made even a brief international journey for professional reasons in 2022. The legal, political, and institutional architecture of States without national border control as a doctrine of the EU has been designed and maintained largely for the convenience of the Anywheres. National governments have dismantled the core sovereign tools of territorial security control to sustain this privilege for the few.
Me too. It would be intellectually dishonest not to acknowledge it: I myself am an ‘Anywhere,’ formed by the European Voluntary Service and by Erasmus, a happy profiteur of its privileges for my four-languages-speaking bi-national family moving regularly between four EU Member States. Precisely because of that, I am acutely aware that the system reflects a profound social and cultural asymmetry.
Schengen’s founding logic, that internal openness can be offset by strong external borders and shared enforcement, has been repeatedly disproven. The European Court of Auditors noted in 2023 that external border protection remains fragmented, with widely varying standards and resources across entry points. Frontex, despite a projected budget of €845 million and a planned deployment of 10,000 standing border guards by 2027, remains operationally limited and politically constrained. Meanwhile, Europol’s 2025 Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment (SOCTA) identified 821 organised criminal groups operating with over 25,000 individuals across the EU, many of which exploit Schengen’s internal borderlessness to move people, weapons, narcotics, and cash with minimal detection. The Bataclan attackers in Paris (2015) and the Moolenbeek bombers (2016) had crossed several EU Member States unchecked. These tragedies exposed how national-level intelligence and policing stop at the border, while criminals and jihadists do not.
Though portrayed as a doctrine of the European integration, Schengen is in fact regularly suspended, especially when national interest is at stake. Under Article 25 of the Schengen Borders Code, Member States can temporarily reinstate control at internal borders during serious threats to public order or security. Since 2015, this clause has been invoked with growing frequency and duration. In 2015 and 2016 during the migration crisis, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Sweden, and Denmark imposed border checks. Between 2016 and 2024, France has continuously maintained internal controls, citing persistent terrorist threats. In 2020 and 2022, the COVID-19 pandemic saw every Schengen country suspend internal border-free travel, often unilaterally. For the G-7 summit in June 2022 in Bavaria, chancellor Merkel ordered to close German boarders to protect the G-7 leaders against imported Antifa mass protest. Between 2023 and 2025, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Slovakia have reinstated controls in response to migration pressures and geopolitical concerns. As of today, 13 EU Member States maintain some form of internal border checks – almost half of all of them! The message is clear: when trust collapses, Member States reach for the levers of sovereignty they never truly gave away.
Open internal borders have not only increased vulnerability to organised crime and terrorism. They have also led to secondary migration flows. According to Eurodac data, over 65% of irregular migrants in the EU move beyond their first country of entry, often evading detection entirely. Wealthier Member States bear disproportionate pressures on housing, services, and integration systems without tools to control who enters. While 77% of EU citizens support free movement in principle (Eurobarometer, 2024), 61% believe it has increased the risks of crime and illegal migration, particularly in France, Germany, and Austria. Most worryingly, Schengen has shifted power over borders and asylum policy from national parliaments to opaque Brussels working groups and EU agencies, undermining democratic legitimacy and national self-determination.
We need to ask ourselves: Can a system be considered legitimate if less than 1% of citizens use it daily, while 100% bear its consequences? Can real security be ensured when border management is outsourced to supranational technocracies? Can trust in democratic governance survive if the institutions meant to protect citizens instead prioritise abstract mobility over practical sovereignty?
Europe must now confront these questions honestly. A partial repatriation of border controls, reinforced by bilateral and regional agreements, would restore democratic accountability while allowing for flexibility in crisis response.
Schengen at 40: When ‘Anywheres’ Celebrate a Technocratic Luxury
Schengen, a village in Luxembourg where the Schengen Agreement was signed
Carrasco – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Agreement#/media/File:Schengen_Agreement_place.jpg, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=94286930
You may also like
The State of American Conservatism
The competing legacies of Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley still shape American political discourse, but the relationship between their conservatisms is more complex than commonly portrayed.
Is German Politics Dominated by Cartel Parties?
Is there any better expression to describe the mechanisms maintaining the political power of parties that have been losing votes for years?
The Anti-Israel Tantrum Threatening To Break Eurovision
Four nations have declared they will boycott next year’s song contest over the inclusion of the Jewish State. Good riddance.
When five Western European states signed the Schengen Agreement in June 1985, they launched what would later be hailed as a doctrine in European integration: the gradual abolition of internal border controls. Forty years later, Schengen has become a sacred pillar of the EU’s borderless ideal and a showcase of supranational governance.
But Schengen’s reality is far more nuanced than its myth. For all its celebration in Brussels circles these days, it is not a large scale shared European good in practice. Schengen is, above all, a technocratic luxury, disproportionately used and defended by what David Goodhart famously called the ‘Anywheres’: mobile, university-educated, transnational professionals who feel at home in multiple countries and cultures. For them, home is where the WiFi connects automatically. By contrast, the ‘Somewheres,’ those rooted in one place, one culture, and one national identity, make up the vast majority of Europe’s population. They live in the provinces, suburbs, and post-industrial towns. They do not live transnational lives, nor do they benefit directly from open borders. For them, Schengen is not the daily excitement at any airport but a distant abstraction. Worse, it often symbolises loss: of control, of order, and of political voice.
Every day, only 3.5 million people cross internal borders within the Schengen Area. In a Union of over 450 million inhabitants, that number reveals how narrow and stratified the benefit actually is: it concerns only 0.78% of the population of all Member States, less than 1 % of the overall population. The vast majority of citizens, especially the Somewheres, rarely cross borders at all, except for family holidays or short trips. According to Eurostat, only 11% of EU citizens made even a brief international journey for professional reasons in 2022. The legal, political, and institutional architecture of States without national border control as a doctrine of the EU has been designed and maintained largely for the convenience of the Anywheres. National governments have dismantled the core sovereign tools of territorial security control to sustain this privilege for the few.
Me too. It would be intellectually dishonest not to acknowledge it: I myself am an ‘Anywhere,’ formed by the European Voluntary Service and by Erasmus, a happy profiteur of its privileges for my four-languages-speaking bi-national family moving regularly between four EU Member States. Precisely because of that, I am acutely aware that the system reflects a profound social and cultural asymmetry.
Schengen’s founding logic, that internal openness can be offset by strong external borders and shared enforcement, has been repeatedly disproven. The European Court of Auditors noted in 2023 that external border protection remains fragmented, with widely varying standards and resources across entry points. Frontex, despite a projected budget of €845 million and a planned deployment of 10,000 standing border guards by 2027, remains operationally limited and politically constrained. Meanwhile, Europol’s 2025 Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment (SOCTA) identified 821 organised criminal groups operating with over 25,000 individuals across the EU, many of which exploit Schengen’s internal borderlessness to move people, weapons, narcotics, and cash with minimal detection. The Bataclan attackers in Paris (2015) and the Moolenbeek bombers (2016) had crossed several EU Member States unchecked. These tragedies exposed how national-level intelligence and policing stop at the border, while criminals and jihadists do not.
Though portrayed as a doctrine of the European integration, Schengen is in fact regularly suspended, especially when national interest is at stake. Under Article 25 of the Schengen Borders Code, Member States can temporarily reinstate control at internal borders during serious threats to public order or security. Since 2015, this clause has been invoked with growing frequency and duration. In 2015 and 2016 during the migration crisis, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Sweden, and Denmark imposed border checks. Between 2016 and 2024, France has continuously maintained internal controls, citing persistent terrorist threats. In 2020 and 2022, the COVID-19 pandemic saw every Schengen country suspend internal border-free travel, often unilaterally. For the G-7 summit in June 2022 in Bavaria, chancellor Merkel ordered to close German boarders to protect the G-7 leaders against imported Antifa mass protest. Between 2023 and 2025, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Slovakia have reinstated controls in response to migration pressures and geopolitical concerns. As of today, 13 EU Member States maintain some form of internal border checks – almost half of all of them! The message is clear: when trust collapses, Member States reach for the levers of sovereignty they never truly gave away.
Open internal borders have not only increased vulnerability to organised crime and terrorism. They have also led to secondary migration flows. According to Eurodac data, over 65% of irregular migrants in the EU move beyond their first country of entry, often evading detection entirely. Wealthier Member States bear disproportionate pressures on housing, services, and integration systems without tools to control who enters. While 77% of EU citizens support free movement in principle (Eurobarometer, 2024), 61% believe it has increased the risks of crime and illegal migration, particularly in France, Germany, and Austria. Most worryingly, Schengen has shifted power over borders and asylum policy from national parliaments to opaque Brussels working groups and EU agencies, undermining democratic legitimacy and national self-determination.
We need to ask ourselves: Can a system be considered legitimate if less than 1% of citizens use it daily, while 100% bear its consequences? Can real security be ensured when border management is outsourced to supranational technocracies? Can trust in democratic governance survive if the institutions meant to protect citizens instead prioritise abstract mobility over practical sovereignty?
Europe must now confront these questions honestly. A partial repatriation of border controls, reinforced by bilateral and regional agreements, would restore democratic accountability while allowing for flexibility in crisis response.
Our community starts with you
READ NEXT
The Anti-Israel Tantrum Threatening To Break Eurovision
Silent Leader, Stagnant Nation: Romania’s Lethargy Laid Bare
Why Does the BBC Platform a Crank? Because He’s Their Crank