by Dimitar Bechev*
Believe it or not, European integration is on the march forward. Romania and Bulgaria joined the Schengen Area on January 1, 2025, and border checks on the two countries’ land borders with the rest of the EU were lifted. This marks a rare bright spot at a time of deep domestic political crisis in both countries and geopolitical and economic challenges in Europe.
Yet Schengen’s overdue extension into southeast Europe highlights its travails. The truth is that the passport-free travel area has been eroded from within. Ironically, the hardening of internal EU borders made it easier for Romania and Bulgaria, which fulfilled Schengen’s technical entry criteria back in 2011, to finally join the club.
Austria is a critical piece of the puzzle. In November 2024, Vienna decided to extend checks at the borders with Hungary and Slovenia for another six months. This helped Romania and Bulgaria’s Schengen bid. Austria had blocked the two countries for fears of irregular migration from Turkiye and the Middle East, and the far-right Austrian Freedom Party (FPO) making electoral gains. Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s government acquiesced thanks to lobbying by Hungary’s Viktor Orban, an anti-migration hawk of transatlantic renown. The deal effectively makes border controls—a temporary measure under Schengen rules—semi-permanent. This extra layer of security is meant to address concerns about Bulgaria’s entry adding another 259 kilometers to Schengen zone’s border with Turkiye.
Austrian domestic politics have shifted, too. Now that Nehammer has stepped down, FPO will lead the new coalition government. They own the deal and therefore won’t be raising alarm over it.
Austria is hardly exceptional. Back in September, Germany reinstated checks on all its land borders. The list of member states that have brought back at least some controls includes Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden, and Norway—a non-EU country but part of Schengen. To be sure, that does not mean that the freedom of movement within the twenty-seven-strong bloc has been abolished. But checks and even temporary border closures have long ceased to be an exception. From the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis to the restrictions in response to COVID-19 in 2020-21, the direction of travel is toward states’ wresting back control.
Pressure on Schengen comes hand in hand with the reinforcement of the EU’s external borders. The incoming Polish presidency of the EU Council will oversee the introduction of a long-anticipated Entry/Exit System for registering non-EU citizens in the Schengen Area. The EU is also set to unveil an online travel authorization system, ETIAS, comparable to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA), which the United States applies to international visitors.
These measures will allow the EU to monitor the flow of people more closely. They will create some extra paperwork for entrants, such as British citizens going on holiday in Spain. Some EU citizens will be affected, too. In response to the EU’s move, the UK has introduced the Electronic Travel Authorisation—a system mirroring ETIAS.
But despite their cost, these changes have not triggered political backlash. There has not been a revolt over red tape or granting Brussels extra powers. Simply put, it is because the zeitgeist has shifted among the EU populations and border controls are popular. Euroskeptics no longer attack the EU for being bad for security at the frontiers. Rather, they want it to go further. The far right favors beefing up Frontex, the EU’s border and coast guard agency whose former director is now a member of the European Parliament for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally.
Populists on the right are now also fond of collective EU solutions on other related challenges, too. In 2023, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni went as far as backing the revamped EU migration pact. Viktor Orban, no fan of the latter, has pushed for closer ties between the twenty-seven-strong bloc and Turkiye. At the tail end of 2024, the Hungarian leader visited President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss the prospective Ukraine talks but also post-Bashar al-Assad Syria. Orban will no doubt be advocating for a renewal of the 2016 refugee deal with Turkiye, now that the EU has concluded a similar €7.4 billion ($8 billion) pact with Egypt. Schengen’s extension to the Bulgarian-Turkish border will serve as an argument for Brussels financially assisting Ankara in repatriating at least some of the 3.9 million Syrians residing on Turkish soil.
The focus on borders clearly ties into the defensive mentality taking hold in Europe. In the not-too-distant past, the EU harbored ambitions to remake the world in its own image. Now, the paramount objective is to offer protection against threats coming from without. The new European Commission features portfolios such as defense and economic security. All hail Fortress Europe.
*Senior Fellow, Carnegie Europe
**first published in: Carnegieendowment.org
By: N. Peter Kramer
