Taking back control

It was pointless of Italy to impose border checks on travellers arriving from Spain in response to the Ceuta crisis. By the time it did so, most of the migrants who arrived between 30 and 31 July had been returned to Morocco, and those that remained had no way of travelling into the rest of Spain, let alone further into Europe.

Even more absurd was Spain’s retaliatory imposition of identical measures on Italy, which the latter’s foreign minister called “incomprehensible and completely unacceptable”. It’s hard to see what sort of traveller Madrid’s spot border checks are aimed at: perhaps a very determined yet indecisive migrant who somehow made it from Ceuta into mainland Spain (even though the former is not part of the Schengen Zone), then into Italy, before thinking: “Wait - I think I prefer Spain. Time to turn around.”

Even then, their chances of being detected would be slim: Spanish officials said last week that only about 5-10% of passengers arriving on planes from Italy were being asked to show identification. If you’re going to do something pointless and disruptive, at least do it properly.

Some criticised this border dispute because it introduces controls - albeit random ones for very short periods - in a region that is supposed to be entirely free of frontiers. But Spain and Italy are not the only EU countries reintroducing identity checks on their borders. In response to escalating concerns about security and illegal immigration, several frontiers have been quietly reimposed throughout the Schengen Zone. Right now this region isn’t borderless - there are merely fewer borders.

Under the Schengen Borders Code, countries can temporarily reintroduce border checks “in the event of a serious threat to public policy or internal security”. Including Spain and Italy, over a third of the region’s countries are now conducting checks along all or some of their frontiers: France, Germany, Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway (a member of Schengen but not the EU), Poland and Sweden. None of the current restrictions last longer than the end of the year, but they can be renewed.

As well as checking arrivals from Spain, Italy is also policing its border with Slovenia until the end of the year, citing the “threat of terrorist infiltrations into migratory flows along the western Balkan route”. Germany is monitoring all of its nine land borders and France six of its eight European borders (including that with Spain). Both are concerned about the “deteriorated global security environment” and the criminal networks that facilitate migrant smuggling.

Spain’s migration spat with Italy is petty, but those two countries can’t be blamed for spoiling Europe’s border-free paradise. For the rest of this year at least, the Schengen Zone will be a very strange sort of borderless community - one in which you need your passport ready most of the time.