What about the neighbours? The impact of Schengen along the EU’s external borders

Over the last few years, the EU’s discourse
concerning border controls has presented a paradox – on
the one hand, the EU promotes good neighbourly relations, while
on the other hand it emphasises the need to strictly implement
the Schengen acquis on border controls and visa regimes.
According to this article by 
Joanna Apap

and 
Angelina Tchorbadjiyska

in the 
CEPS Working Documents

series, the main underlying obstacle to a good and open
partnership between the EU and the candidate states, and in
turn between the enlarged EU and its neighbours, is a lack of
trust towards the EU’s neighbours.

One major challenge now for neighbours such
as Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus is how to
convince the EU that they can be good partners
in fulfilling the objectives of Schengen and
protecting the EU’s interest with respect
to who comes in and out of its external
borders. 

The two main questions on which this working
paper is centred are: 

– To what extent can there be flexibility in
implementing Schengen rules to prevent
marginalising the new EU neighbours as a result
of fears about ‘threats’ moving
westwards across borders? 

– What can the EU neighbours do in the short,
medium and long term to promote trust and to
one day hope to come off the Schengen
‘negative list’ with respect to
freedom of movement? 

Read the article in full on the CEPS website

.

Joanna Apap

is head of unit and research fellow on Justice
and Home Affairs at the Centre for European
Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels. 
Angelina Tchorbadjiyska

is a scientific collaborator with the Justice
and Home Affairs Unit at CEPS and a PhD
candidate at the Katholieke Universitieit
Leuven (KUL) in Belgium.