The establishment of the border-free Shengen area was one of the proudest accomplishments of the EU. It was also genuinely popular - perhaps the only benefit of EU membership that enjoyed wide traction across Europe. Combined with Europe's generally low rail fares (with the exception of the non-Shengen UK) it has formed the free-movement mindset of a whole generation of young Europeans who until recent years had never known anything else. Every resident of the Shengen area owned keenly their right to borderless travel within the zone.
All that ended long before the Wuhan virus. By the end of 2016 Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France Germany and Sweden had already reintroduced border checks because of the migrant crisis. By April 2020 the borders were more closed than they had been in the 1960s. And closed borders have seen the re-emergence of tensions that have not been visible for decades, as Politico EU reports -
In the tiny western region of Saarland, which borders France and Luxembourg, local media have in recent days reported clashes dating back to late March, including cars with French license plates being scratched or pelted with eggs, and Germans yelling: "Fucking Frenchmen, go back to your fucking corona country!"It's all a long way from a hauntingly evocative exhibition of photographs I saw at Amsterdam's Stedelijk in about '91 - of Europe's deserted border posts, with broken or boarded windows, graffiti on the walls and blowsy weeds growing everywhere through the cracks.
The restoration of the free travel area must be high on the EU's agenda, but can it ever go back to its heady millennial heyday? The problem of course is though it serves well the good and just burgers of the Shengen area nations, it serves equally well both illegal migrants and smugglers of contraband. I suspect EU governments would be willing to bear a small amount of leakage for the overwhelming economic benefits it brings, but Germany's open-armed extension to the world's migrants in 2015 blew it. The good burgers of the EU made clear at the ballot box that they were willing to add friction to their free travel if it halted the flood of Iraqis, Afghans, north Africans and migrants from the 'stans turning up with outstretched hands.
And post-Covid air travel looks likely to be so unbearably onerous that it will be shunned by all but the poor benighted commercial gents who will be forced by circumstances to endure a 4-hour check -in for a 90 minute flight, gagged with a face mask the whole time and no trolleys at all. For these stoics, a half-hour queue on arrival to clear immigration will add little pain; like having to walk home in the rain after falling in the river. Two weeks' quarantine for a two hour sales meeting may even kill commercial air travel completely.
Like so many things, the Wuhan virus may end free movement altogether. Yes, I enjoyed it and yes I'll miss mainland Europe without it. It was one of mankind's occasional optimistic forays into practical idealism, those little bubbles of hope that seem inevitably doomed to fail.
