The Schengen agreement was signed in May 1990, by France, Germany, Belgium and Holland. Since then its membership has risen to 13, and it has constructed fortress Europe. It was designed to fulfil the requirement of the Treaty of Rome on free movement inside the EU, reinforce the external borders against those victims of capitalist globalisation and wars seeking to get in, and strengthen internal control against those who manage to get in.
Under Schengen those the Agreement describes as 'aliens' are to be kept out. This is designed to prevent so-called 'economic migration' - people trying to escape desperately poor social conditions in third world countries. Those seeking asylum face stringent conditions and blatant discrimination in getting their applications accepted Not everyone from outside the EU is treated the same. Schengen is based on the racist 'white list' principle under which applicants from countries such as the USA, Canada or Australia are treated in one way and applicants from third world countries or Eastern Europe, are treated in another.
Britain has stood outside of Schengen, but this was not because of objections to its racist provisions. Neither the former Tory government or new Labour objected to the strengthening of the border controls around the EU, or the strengthening of internal controls inside. They were and are fully in favour of those things. What they objected to was the abolition (or even relaxation) of borders within the EU! The Asylum and Immigration Act in Britain was modelled on Schengen principles, and involved restrictions on asylum seekers right up to imprisonment in detention centres.
To compensate for the loss of internal border controls, Schengen involves a huge increase in internal surveillance against individuals. The main instrument for this is the Schengen Information Service (SIS). This system is the first experiment in large scale, international sharing of sensitive data, and is at the heart of the EU's security system. It already holds more than 10m files which can be accessed by more than 50,000 ter-
minals across the member states, including at police stations and passport control locations - with data protection mainly ignored. Large amounts of personal information including fingerprints and documentation are included in this system. At the same time the principle of 'the first asylum country' gives every member state the right to deport applicants to the country of entry without even reading their asylum application. This automatically excludes anyone refused the right to stay in one member state applying to any other. In other words a refusal of an asylum application in one country in any member state means exclusion from the EU itself.
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Almost 90% of the persons registered in the SIS are immigrants, among them many asylum seekers. Schengen represents a major extension of the powers of the police, and the immigration service, to make arrests across borders. Schengen here represents one of the biggest steps towards a 'Euro-FBI'. These measure have been condemned by both Amnesty International and the UN High Commission for Refugees. The Schengen agreement also deals with what it calls public order issues across the member states. A manual produced by the working group on police and security under Schengen says! "Co-operation pursuant to this manual shall apply, interalia, to events where large numbers of persons from more than one country congregate in one or more Schengen state and where the main purpose of the police presence is to maintain public order and security and prevent criminal offences. Examples of these are sports events, rock concerts, demonstrations or road blockades." The implications for those struggling for a different kind of Europe are clear enough.
Statewatch claims that under the current Danish Presidency the Council of Ministers are planning to introduce a binding Framework Decision on data retention and access by law enforcement agencies (police, customs, immigration and internal security agencies) to all data covering phone calls, faxes, mobile phone calls and internet usage. There is a broader issue as well, and that is how state racism in the form of immigrations controls underpin racism in society and strengthen the far right It is a circular process. Measures which start partly as a concession to the right then have to be strengthened to keep the far-right and the racists happy. For all these reasons socialists should oppose Schengen and what it represents.