Schengen ain't what it used to be
savageevan.comAs a Dane living in Denmark, I don’t think it’s a big problem. We don’t show passports when entering Germany, only when returning to Denmark. And several times, if I forgot my passport, a driver’s license has been sufficient. Passport control is not really, if I have to be direct, aimed at the locals.
Unfortunately, Schengen has made it easy for organized crime. On the simpler end, for example, bicycle theft, cargo bike theft, and electric bike battery theft have exploded, and the police do not have the resources to solve it. When they occasionally caught the perpetrators and deported them, a couple of months could pass before they encountered the same people again. There is a lot of that kind of thing in Denmark, and unfortunately, it is often people from Eastern European countries who are behind it. I am not far-right, but it is a fact. The ironic thing is that border control doesn’t really solve anything. There is no control when you drive out of the country (possibly with stolen goods), and there is no round-the-clock passport control at all border crossings.
> We don’t show passports when entering Germany
A FlixBus coming from Denmark is likely to be checked in Flensburg.
Ah okay. Didn’t know that. I’ve only crossed the border by plain or car
The busses get a lot more scrutiny.
It’s kind of a class problem, because they target the checks towards the cheapest means of traveling (i.e. most likely to carry illegal refugees). If you fly or take an expensive ferry there are practically never any checks.
Therefore people who can afford more expensive means of transportation don’t see the border checks as much.
>There is no control when you drive out of the country (possibly with stolen goods), and there is no round-the-clock passport control at all border crossings.
The modern EU economy can't function if you were to thoroughly check every single vehicle transiting a border. The costs to the economy would far outpace whatever some Eastern Europe Rroma thieves can steal from someone's back yard, nor do I wish to be checked every single time I cross a border just because I might have a stolen bike in my trunk. Imagine how US's economy would be if they had border checks between states.
Also, EU border checks when they are in place, are mostly restricted to the major roads, but small country roads at borders have no checks, so the truly bad people wishing to cause harm have so many ways of crossing the porous EU border undetected, while the innocent Average Joe has to be stuck in border checks for hours.
So the hole EU border checks thing is just a security theater anyway, causing economic harm and frustration just to look tough for the right wing voters but brining no actual security benefit, except for catching the really really dumb criminals.
Why are you implying the thiefs are Roma? From what I've read and found out from local incidents it's normal people from Romania, Poland, Bulgaria and so on
Because the ethnicity of those from Romania, Poland, Bulgaria is usually Roma/Sinti, even though it's usually not politically correct to say it. Just ask people from Eastern Europe.
No, those usually just live in their camps and go begging, but they sure as hell don't drive for 1½ days to Austria to rob bike stores, as opposed to regular Polish/Bulgarian/Romanians. These groups are sometimes picked up, and just because racism against Roma and Sinti (who are actually stationary most of their lives) is still socially acceptable doesn't change that
Here's a source for one instance in German, turns out it was Polish and Czech gangs of thieves.
The only EU border I know of that has a 24/7 checkpoint with gunned police is Germany Austria. And that is going on for years now. Nowhere else did I ever see a border here with permanent (and constantly heavy armed) checks.
Also I live in Switzerland an no border is controlled permanently, generally I only was controlled once many years ago.
Why specifically Germany-Austria?
I am wondering this as well.
Passengers going through without document checks is a minor element of Schengen. The heavy hitter are the trucks passing borders much faster and with no admin expenses - saves EU countries many billions of EUR annually.
> Passengers going through without document checks is a minor element of Schengen
In a pure economic efficiency sense you might very well be right. But the "illusion" that borders without border control used to give shouldn't be completely disregarded either. Pre 2015 (and Corona) when you could just roam around without ever showing ID just felt very different. It didn't feel like I was moving between distinct and sovereign countries, but more like moving between states in the U.S: "Oh now we crossed in to Texas cowboy noises".
Especially if you live in a border region (e.g Malmö-Copenhagen) and commute across the border, you really feel the difference and might even consider stop doing that because of hassle and increases in travel time.
During corona the closed Finish/Swedish border in Happaranda/Torneå just felt surreal, most warlike experience I've ever had. These cities are essentially one, and all of a sudden families, friends, businesses and their employees were split with fences and armed people stopping them.
Two years ago on our summer holiday we were driving in our camper van from northern Italy to Chamonix through the Mont Blanc tunnel. We were surprised to encounter a similar passport check, before entering the queue to pass through the tunnel.
Last summer I was half way from Amsterdam to Berlin in my van when I remembered I had forgot my passport. I am an American citizen with a Netherlands residency permit, and I remembered the experience the previous summer so I turned around and blew my first day on extra travel. I passed through 4 countries on that trip and I never needed my passport.
I've visited the France Italy border near Menton fairly regularly over many years. Pre EU there were border controls then with the 'border free europe' they disappear completely for a while. Now they are back in a partial way because there were loads of African and similar illegal immigrants and none of the countries really want them so the French set up controls to try to stop them crossing from Italy.
Border controls don't bother me much if they're just a quick check. Countries need to verify that who is coming in is who they say they are. My problem with Schengen Zone is that you can only spend 3 months there and have to leave. There was a time you could go to Europe and spend an entire year traveling country to country, now it's only a 3 months.
It's more or less the same as traveling the US on an ESTA. You can only spend 90 days at a time there.
In the US you can get a B1/B2 that lets you stay 180 days. The same version is much harder to do in Europe since >90 day stays are limited to a single country.
Visa hops are a normal, and usually accepted, thing tho. Ex. Thailand it's only 60 days. People still spend much longer there with short stops trough cheap AirAsia flights
What do you mean? Without a special visa you are only allowed 90 days in a 180 day period within Schengen. No visa hopping around it.
I actually wasn't aware and it led me down a rabbit hole that not even on a EU passport I am allowed to stay longer than 90 days in many countries without letting them know.
The only solution I can think of is for Frontex to take full control of the external EU border. The way I see it, Frontex officers guarding the border would answer directly to Frontex (NOT to some national authority), would be paid by Frontex and, in case of misbehavior, would be prosecuted by an EU prosecutor.
This approach would greatly reduce the smuggling of illegal immigrants (which, in my opinion, happens because many Southern and - especially - Eastern national borders are porous due to easily bribable border guards). Sadly, I don’t see this happening anytime soon.
Well yes internal borders work fine when external borders are taken seriously, not when countries are pretty much forced to accept anyone thanks to human trafficking orgs and lax regulation imagined for war times not for "my country sucks" type of problem.
> And yet: countries like Denmark are safer and more prosperous than ever before.
Maybe ask the Swedes about how things are going there (apart from internet hyperboles, which tend to exaggerate things)
The Asylum system can be improved(its no way fair that some countries have to cater more asylum seekers than others). Sadly there are no legal ways to get the asylum Status, only the way that you have to cross the border without visum and to declare that you need asylum.
>not with the farce that exists today where "asylum" is used is a get-out-of-jail free card
The problem with the current asylum system is basically anyone can come in and say: "look, Russia, US, UK, France and coalition blew up my middle eastern country, so now countries like Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Austria who had nothing to do with it, need to give me asylum to me and my whole family, simple" which makes the system very easy to be gamed as the ECHR forces you to accept anyone who crosses your border and claims asylum with a well rehearsed sob story.
So, is there any surprise of the growth of right wind in Europe? The bigger issue is that voting right wing won't solve this since they legally can't, it's not under their control but the ECHR, so we just keep moving right while suffering the same immigration issues making it a double whammy.
The solution is to reform the ECHR membership and give sovereignty over asylum policies to the member country instead of an foreign org people can't vote for.
Especially now, when Russia and Belarus are weaponizing illegal migration by giving them visa free travel for money to Russia and Belarus so they can then storm the borders with Finland, Norway and Poland. Recently a Polish soldier working the border with Belarus got stabbed on duty by a migrant trying to force the border[1]. This is obviously unacceptable and should mean proper military response against illegal border crossings.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/polish-soldier-dies-aft...
> Asylum today is basically: "look, Russia, US, UK, France and coalition blew up my middle eastern country, so now countries like Denmark
No-no-no, Denmark took an active part in Iraq invasion and was also invaded Libya. Refugee crisis isn’t just about Syria.
Rintzler89 is still right though. Hardly any asylum seekers in eastern european countries because “nordic welfare” > “eastern european welfare”
Not an easy thing to fix
Which middle eastern conflict did Austria take part in?
They contributed Troops to the ISAF troops in afgahnistan for example.
Correction: wrote Usaf instead of ISAF
OEF != ISAF https://web.archive.org/web/20220120001326/http://www.nato.i...
OEF is an NATO Operation, Austrias policy is not to join any International primary Military Organization.
OK, good. So ... 3 soldiers
(about 20% of Tonga's contribution)
Austria: GDP $516.0b, pop 9.0m
Tonga : GDP $000.5b, pop 0.1m
So Tonga 1/1000 GDP and ~1/100 pop contributed 5x more soldiers than Austria.
There's a Coldplay song:
Tonga: "Para-para-para-dise"
Austria: "Para-para-para-site"
What?
Austria not Australia.
Both countries sent troops, australias was much bigger.
The right wing parties act as if we could just return people to Syria, Afghanistan and whereever just as we wand, no questions asked. That you need to cooperate with these countries to return people there...
Which we can't really return since that would mean cooperation with the Taliban. And even if we could cooperate, the countries then don't want them back or will demand various favors or bribes in return so then you're basically funding some terrorist regime to return 3 illegal migrants.
There are very serious checks, what are you talking about?
At least in the South of EU there are places with zero checks in place. I mean there are organizations operating in the Mediterranean whose whole purpose is to offer transport for people outside the EU without any checks required.
Honestly there isn't anything serious about such lack of checks. I'd say maybe US or Australia or such have serious checks in place -- EU is nowhere even close.
Where is evidence for very serious checks?
Sorry, you are the one making claims (which you edited a multiple times), so I won’t bother answering it more than this: you can read the immigration agencies web site for details.
Personally, I think you illustrate well my main issue with the EU, which is that I have to live in the same political entity as the bloody racists in the north and the east.
Still seem worth it overall nevertheless especially considering I already have to live with our local grown racists here anyway.
Anecdotal, but: this is probably more of a Denmark thing and not a Schengen thing. I recently crossed French, Dutch, German, and Polish borders on 4 separate trips and had no checks.
I recently crossed a few borders too, and did not show a passport at any time. When I flew out of Germany the police did not even ask for a boarding pass despite me flying with a checked-in pistol (which is why the police got involved at all: the agent said their instructions is to call the police so they can look at it before the baggage is sent on its way). On arrival to Sweden, the "goods to declare" lane was empty and there was a little sign with a phone number and a message amounting to "call the customs people if you have something to declare".
We crossed Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, and Hungary and were checked when entering Austria and Germany. However this was just but a small inconvenience- we waited over three hours to enter Hungary from non-Schengen country on almost 40 degrees Celsius in a car. Compared to that, Schengen (still) is a godsend.
>We crossed Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, and Hungary and were checked when entering Austria and Germany. However this was just but a small inconvenience
Was that an actual check that could catch something, or was that just a useless inconvenient?
Because whenever I enter Austria, the "border check" is just a young grunt soldier from his mandatory military service slowing down cars to 30kph and waiving them through. One time that young soldier fell asleep in his booth with his hand out. Probably too much partying the night before so I can imagine his CO wasn't thrilled when he saw that.
So to me, the Schengen border checks are 99% inconvenience and security theater, and 1% actual security.
And it's at least 50% racism. They absolutely profile people.
Adding to your anecdotal; went to Netherlands from NYC (passport control to get in), travelled down to Paris through Belgium. Hopped over to Italy and then to Ireland. No issues, and no id checks throughout. (did show passport in Ireland but its not part of Schengen).
As an Austrian I'm very disappointed by this overall development. I grew up in a much more unified European Union and the degradation of Schengen is a very visible sign that something is happening to the union and what's happening is bad news. We have been a leading actor in the destruction of Schengen sadly for internal stupid political reasons.
Doubly so with tons of people working in low paying jobs from these countries here, e.g. 24h care and so on. These people return home every so often to meet their families, only to be stuck at the borders for 12h at a time.
Last week our bus (private travel company) was stoped on borders from France to Germany. They checked IDs of whole bus.
Entering Germany from west is more controlled than from east (never been checked from Czechia or Poland).
> And yet, since we moved to Denmark 3 years ago, every time we've returned to Denmark through Padborg, we've been met by border control
Sorry, but that's just business as usual. Document checks on trains have continued to be a thing despite Schengen since its inception, and are even common on commuter lines. I don't have any hard numbers on their effectiveness, but it's not unusual to see people being detained as a result (which is risky for the detaining agency, as mistakes are quite costly), so I guess there is a net positive there?
Note that, from a passenger PoV, these checks usually consist of "vaguely waving your ID card at the officers passing by" (i.e. less effort than having your ticket checked, which involves interaction with an RFID scanner...), which makes this ominous think-piece even less convincing.
I always find it ironic how Denmark is proud of Vikings and protects borders at the same time. There’re axes on border guards’ uniforms. Also, the traffic lights have a viking with an axe instead of a regular figure. Yet Vikings were universally hated back in the day for not respecting borders.
"Not respecting borders" is an odd way to summarize indiscriminate killing of unarmed people, burning houses and crops, robbery, raping and forcing people into slavery including sex slavery.
I mean, everyone was doing it once in a while back then. But Vikings were probably one of the worst offenders.
Checking IDs is the standard model in the US along the border states in the south (don't know about the north).
My earliest border police checkpoint was in '87, south east of Phoenix on the way to LA. My buddies from Las Cruces always use to remind us to carry your ids, but then they used to do the beer runs across the border as it was cheaper.
Who here think embedded ID chip is not coming - you know, to save labor costs