Brussels blog

Later this week the European Commission will put forward its plan to reform the passport-free Schengen area, as we detailed in our paper edition some weeks ago, and again today.

But its proposals won’t address what to do about Bulgaria and Romania, the two EU members who want to join Schengen but so far haven’t been allowed to.

Both countries have met the technical requirements to be part of Schengen, but existing members – led by France and Germany – say systemic corruption in the civil service are undermining border controls. An onerous “cooperation and verification mechanism” is meant to ensure steady improvement.

Diplomats are thinking creatively, however. One of the sticking points is that allowing Bulgaria and Romania into the pact would create a “land bridge” from Greece to mainland Schengen. (Greece currently has no land borders with other Schengen countries, and seeing as the Greek-Turkish border is the prime gateway for illegal migrants to come into Europe, losing the existing buffer is a problem.)

Poland, which is now handling the dossier as holder of the rotating EU presidency, has revived an idea to grant Schengen access to Romania and Bulgaria in two stages: keep passport controls for now on land and sea borders, but abolish them for air travel.

That would in theory block illegal migrants in Greece from crossing into Bulgaria in the first place, and those that do make it through won’t be able to board planes to other parts of Europe. At the same time, the land border between Romania and Hungary would also remain as a “real” frontier to the Schengen area.

The thinking goes that even part-accession would for now satisfy Romania and Bulgaria, as well as their many backers in Eastern Europe who are keen to see them join.

But there’s a problem.

The part-accession plan presupposes that air travellers between two airports in Schengen need to show identification papers. But that is no longer the case. There are plenty of airlines that now allow you to board a flight without showing your passport at any stage: not at check-in, not at the airport, not even when boarding the plane.

Though most airlines still check ID to match the traveller with the name on the ticket, they are under no obligation to do so. The Commission confirms that it is indeed not a requirement, and airlines such as SAS and Brussels Airlines have already gone passport-free.

If you assume – as the EU clearly does – that Bulgaria and Romania’s land borders are not up to scratch, that means a migrant coming in through Turkey can get to Sofia via Greece without and ID. And indeed, this happens today. From there, there is no reason why these migrants couldn’t in future hop on a plane to Frankfurt, Paris or Stockholm without ever proving his identity.

In practice, it’s more than likely that the French government, say, would quietly ensure that all carriers coming in from Romania and Bulgaria had such ID-checking requirements in place. But even that basic precaution would leave the ground staff of Air France, TAROM (the Romanian flag-carrier), Ryanair and others as the new gatekeepers to Schengen.

That would be better than no checks at all for overland travel once Romania and Bulgaria get full Schengen accession. But it might still fall foul of the anti-migration climate that is prevalent in many parts of Europe.