Would we have to join Schengen?

The Schengen area is a bugbear of Brexiters, who often describe it as “open borders”. This is a very misleading description of what Schengen is and does.

Let’s start at the beginning. The EU has ‘freedom of movement’, where EU citizens have the right to live, work and study in any other EU country. Schengen is an enhancement to this right, making it so that EU citizens travelling to most EU countries can pass through borders without a need for border checks, such as showing a passport or visa. This is particularly useful in countries that have large land borders from one EU country to another: the ‘border’ becomes little more than a road sign welcoming you to the other country, similarly to travelling between (for example) England and Scotland. It smooths the path for goods imports and exports as well as the movement of people.

However – if this needs to be said – this does not mean abolishing border controls for people arriving from outside the EU. Police checks can also still be carried out to catch criminals. It is also possible to temporarily reimpose border controls as needed, for example for security reasons.

Could the UK opt out?

Two EU states are currently not members of the Schengen area: Cyprus and Ireland. Of the two, Ireland has a formal opt-out. This is because it still has a ‘Common Travel Area’ with the UK, which is incompatible with Schengen but allows the Northern Ireland border in particular to remain open.

Similarly to the situation with the euro, Cyprus is technically obliged to join Schengen, but has been an EU member since 2004 and has not done so – though it does now wish to join.

Before Brexit, the UK had an opt-out from Schengen. While such opt-outs do not automatically carry over, the reasoning behind it would remain the same: the UK is an island, which anyway invalidates most of the assumptions and benefits of Schengen. (The UK has no land border with any EU country except Ireland.)

As with many other issues, this is something that would be part of the UK’s accession negotiations with the EU. It is not, however, an issue that the EU is likely to consider centrally important.

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