Fellow Brussels Blogger Peter Spiegel gives a comprehensive account in today’s paper of how European integration is not just slowing down, it appears to be unravelling.
His argument is that the two most visible achievements of the European Union – namely, the single currency and the Schengen passport-free travel zone – are under unprecedented assault.
What about the third and last great European grand projet: the right of EU citizens to live and work anywhere in an EU country other than their own? A core benefit of European integration, it is a used by an estimated 12m Europeans – a population roughly the size of Belgium.
That, too, may be in an early form of trouble, put under pressure by a blend of populism, high unemployment and a lack of political will to defend gains made over the past six decades.
Once again, the Dutch have been at the forefront. They may dislike being seen as obstructionist in EU matters, but when it comes to free movement they are the most vocal in arguing that the current rules are not sustainable.
Along with some others, notably France, Dutch authorities want to clarify the rules on how they can kick out intra-EU migrants who are unemployed, or commit crimes, or become generally undesirable. (Under current EU legislation, it is possible but difficult to do so, partly because the law is unclear.)
Diplomats see that as an early sign of trouble: “First you kick out the undesirables who are already in your country, then you start asking to check that those want to move won’t cause problems,” says one. “Pretty soon, you have what looks like a work-permit system within the EU.”
The Dutch campaign, which was discussed last week in parliament, was originally spearheaded by Geert Wilders, the anti-migrant populist whose support the coalition government relies in for support. But as Matt Steinglass, our Amsterdam correspondent, makes clear in a recent piece, the rest of the political spectrum has now fallen in line.
That Polish strawberry-pickers would be accused of stealing Dutch jobs is perhaps a little odd: the country has the lowest jobless rate in the EU, at 4.3 per cent. So how long before the Spanish government complains about seasonal workers hoovering up jobs in its labour market, where one in five are unemployed?
Increasingly, just because a migrant worker happens to be Polish rather than Moroccan, it hasn’t stopped populists from arguing that the new arrival is “stealing” a job. For a European body politic already struggling to deal with populism, the differences can be tricky to explain.
As Hugo Brady of the Centre for European Reform think-tank told me a few months ago: “Free movement is such an accepted part of Europe today that Brussels policymakers don’t even think of people relocating from one EU country to another as migration. But to the man in the street, what the EU calls ‘free movement’ is in fact intercontinental migration.”
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has insisted it will fight any attempts to dilute the right to free movement. If anything, it says, the scheme looks to be in rude health: at the start of May, Poles and other eastern Europeans were given the right to settle in Germany for the first time, after a seven year transition since the day they joined the EU.
But its record in fighting member states who transgress is not great. The most high-profile eviction case to date, when France drove out thousands of mainly Romanian Roma gypsies in 2010, led to a diplomatic row when justice commissioner Viviane Reding accused the French authorities of behaving like the Nazis. But ultimately Brussels balked at taking on Paris.
That may not really have set a precedent, as Romanians and Bulgarians are still in their seven-year transition period, where older member states are allowed to keep migration restrictions until 2014. However, the arguments that were used by France to kick out the Roma are the same as those that could be put forward to exclude Poles, Greeks or others – that they are a burden on the French state.
AS with Schengen, there’s no suggestion the system will collapse overnight. Nobody is suggesting that British retirees living on Spain’s Costa del Sol are about to be repatriated; nor that the squadrons of French bankers living in London will be asked to leave. Some dismiss the Dutch attempt to redefine free movement rules as a campaign mounted for a domestic audience, with the full knowledge that getting the other 26 EU member states to adopt change will be ultimately fruitless. Maybe.
But it’s hard to see how all this procedes without more controls on where EU citizens can and can’t move. For example, those with criminal records would effectively be excluded from free movement schemes, pre-designated as a potential threat to public order. Or current rules that theoretically can lead to the repatriation of unemployed EU migrants are enforced more rigorously. Certain industrial sectors could be “protected” from outsiders in a bid to boost local employment.
That’s a slippery slope, and one that looks to have become slipperier in recent months.
Across the globe: Gideon Rachman and his FT colleagues debate international affairs on