Nine governments defy Schengen order

The European Commission moved on June 2 against a fiction that has been allowed to harden into normal practice: "temporary" border checks inside Schengen that have lasted years. It told nine governments to begin dismantling internal checkpoints in the passport-free area, which covers 29 European countries and 450 million people. Germany, France, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Slovenia and Sweden are all still running controls that were meant to be exceptional. Some have been in place for more than a decade.

The Commission has a harder weapon available. Article 258 TFEU, the treaty clause that lets it sue member states for breaching EU law, is built for precisely this kind of dispute. It has never used it against internal border controls. Instead, it issued non-binding opinions (European Commission, Mirage News) and recommended a "gradual phase-out."

Temporary Controls, Permanent Checkpoints

France has renewed its "temporary" controls 24 times since the November 2015 terror attacks. Austria has been checking its borders with Hungary and Slovenia continuously since 2015. Germany, which had long maintained checks on its Austrian border, extended them to all nine land borders in September 2024.

Article 25 of the Schengen Borders Code allows temporary controls for a maximum of six months per threat. The EU's Court of Justice ruled in April 2022 that this limit is binding. Governments have found a way around it by treating each renewal as a response to a "new" threat: migration in one cycle, terrorism in the next, Russian sabotage after that. France's Conseil d'État, its highest administrative court, accepted that logic in March 2025 by treating an October 2024 renewal as a fresh reintroduction, effectively resetting the clock.

The 2024 reform of the Schengen Code was meant to restore discipline to the system. In practice, it loosened it: extending the maximum duration from two to three years and adding new grounds for justification. What courts had begun to see as unlawful was brought back inside the law.

Nine Capitals, One Answer

Germany's Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt rejected the recommendation outright, announcing another six-month extension. Italy's Lega declared that "we decide who we check at our borders, not Brussels". Austria's FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl, who has built his politics around "Fortress Austria", showed no sign of backing down.

The Netherlands is the partial exception. It plans to replace fixed checkpoints with mobile patrols by autumn 2026, moving towards the kind of risk-based policing the Commission regards as acceptable.

The €70 Billion Price of Political Theatre

The bill is economic. The dividend is political. Some 3.5 million people cross internal Schengen borders daily, including 1.9 million permanent cross-border commuters. Nijmegen's mayor Hubert Bruls says the controls "damage the relationship between both countries" and cost commuters time and money every day. A study by the Centre for Economic Policy Research estimates that the checks cut EU trade in goods and services by 1.3%, or €70 billion in lost annual volume.

Migration researcher Gerald Knaus calls Germany's controls "symbolic politics that only the AfD used to demand". In France, Justice Minister Darmanin has proposed a three-year immigration moratorium widely read as positioning for the 2027 presidential race. Governments are keeping controls that courts and economists question because taking them away carries an electoral cost.

A German court in Koblenz ruled in May 2026 that controls at the Luxembourg border violated the Schengen Code. Germany appealed and extended them anyway. JEF Luxembourg, the Young European Federalists chapter, has urged Luxembourg's government to take Germany to the EU court under Article 259, the rarely used procedure that allows one member state to sue another. No government has taken that route. The Commission has avoided its own enforcement powers. National courts issue rulings, then the next six-month renewal moves the facts on. Schengen was designed as a binding legal framework. It now functions, in parts, as a voluntary arrangement that survives where domestic politics permits it.