A socialist Europe would be border free. And even Schengen, along with the Working Time Directive, has some positive aspects for the mass of the people in Europe. (The latter is the particular bane of the life of Britain's small employers - especially in haulage - who denounce Brussel's 'red tape' which prevents workers having the 'freedom' to work till they drop.)
The EU's Schengen agreement for the free movement of European citizens across borders was designed to compliment the free movement of Capital. It was dressed up as a major benefit for the people of Europe and there is no doubt that millions do benefit, from higher wages in more developed countries and from wider experience. It is no accident that in 23 of the 27 members of the EU immigrants are considerably younger than the local population. (Eurostat September 2010.) Before the current refugee crisis, 50% of Europe's citizens thought that Schengen was the best thing about the EU.
Socialists and humanitarians warned that Schengen was always a policy designed as much to keep people out of Europe as it was to allow free movement inside. Western Europe was to share its privileges - but among its own. The rest of the world were not welcome at the feast. In essence the EU dropped its internal borders in order to create a wall against the peoples of the rest of the world. (None of this applies to the rich of course. They can go anywhere they want without hinderance.)
And now the dark heart of the Schengen agreement is revealed. Already a European Commission amendment to Schengen has been adopted stating that EU nationals will need to submit passports at Schengen borders, as the rest of the world already has to do. On March 7 2016 the German leadership of the EU agreed a deal with Turkey to implement 'Fortress Europe' in the face of Europe's refugee crisis. Fortresses have dungeons. It turns out that Fortress Europe needs a prison camp just outside its perimeter in which to dump those who would try to scale Europe's castle walls.
Even the UN, let alone Amnesty and a host of other organisations that campaign for human rights, have denounced the deal. Only Syrian refugees are allowed inside Europe (although that practically means inside Greece, as no agreements have yet been implemented to 'share' refugees between the EU's nations.) Afghanis, North Africans, Pakistanis, Palestinians and the rest will be exported back to life in Turkish camps, paid for by EU money until they are forced to go back to war, oppression and poverty in their 'home' countries. Meanwhile an equivalent number of Syrians will leave their spaces in Turkey's camps to join their fellow refugees in Greece.
This is all madness of course. There is not the slightest chance that it will work in any coherent way. The internal borders that have now grown up like weeds across Europe will not now come down. Greece, bankrupted by the Troika, will continue to bear the unbearable burdens of the hundreds of thousands who seek sanctuary, until its remaining social fabric rips apart. It is simply a cynical means to legitimate the pushing of the Schengen border outwards to Turkey's shores, and with the help of NATO prevent the current exodus from Turkey to Greece. It is a typically hopeless and potentially murderous 'instant solution' to a growing structural problem of the modern capitalist world. The only strategic aspect of this violent violation of human rights is the behind the scene there is now desperate pressure by the EU to end the Syrian war at any cost.
This is a structural problem - unmanageable globally in our current social, political and economic system of society. Indeed largely created by it. Pax Americana is collapsing. And in the light of its dismal decline and the serried wars it has left in its wake it is also trashing any hope for trans-global peace and development let alone any bridging of the expanding abyss between the world's wealthy and the rest. For example the global financial system is inherently unstable in consequence. At the finance system's nuclear core, US debts (already doubled since 2008) will expand from $19 trillion to $65 trillion under its present commitments in the next decades of its decline. The Congressional Budget Office projects public debt in 2026 will jump ten points to 86% of GDP, and will hit a record 155% of GDP in three decades. Interest on debt is projected to eclipse military spending by 2021. Debt interest payments will become a larger government expense than even Social Security by about 2060. A new financial crisis, which will hit the poor worst is thereby built in to the economic structure of the world. In sum all this means that refugee crises will not decline. It will increase. Trump's Mexican wall or Merkel's Fortress Europe, complete with its Turkish regime guard dogs, will not hold the line. Neither will more authoritarian or military 'solutions' in the future. Our current social system is breaking down in face of the world's great problems.
We need a system of society that first recognises and names the great crises that humanity faces and which understands that going on in the old way will make these crises worse. We need to start by finding the means of sharing the world's wealth and its resources as an absolutely basic requirement to meet humanities needs. The instruments are there to make such choices feasible and practical. There have been successful great movements of people in the past; to the US, to Europe after WW2. There have been great shifts of wealth and resources in the Marshal Plan, during wars and for projects like the Moon landings. Most important millions already and perhaps billions of people, as the concrete practicalities unfolded, would have the hope and inspiration to build such a world.
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