Summaries

Schengen and its Consequences – a One-sided Success Story
by Heiner Busch
The interior borders will be done away with, the drop in security will by balanced – such is the basic logic of the Schengen Agreement. In reality, Schengen co-operation has only been a very one-sided success story. While the Schengen Executive Council continues to develop new security measures devoid of any parliamentary control, – the border controls within the Schengen Group continue to take place.

Schengen – Quo vadis?
by Katina Schubert and Mark Holzberger
Until now two different and separate structures for co-operation in domestic and justice affairs existed within the European Union: on the one hand the co-operation of a number of the states of the European Union within the Schengen Group, and on the other hand the Third Pillar of the European Union. In neither of these groups did the European Parliament or any of the national parliaments of the member states have any say on what these groups were doing. The Schengen Group acted as the core of Europe which defined the course and direction of policy-making in the fields of police cooperation and refugee and migration policies for the European Union as a whole. Through the Schengen Protocol which is part of the Amsterdam Treaty, the whole „Schengen Acquis“ – both the two agreements of 1985 and 1990 as well as the approximately 180 resolutions passed by the executive council, is to be introduced into the European Union. Despite this fact, the old structures of the Schengen core Europe will continue to exist and function as in the past.

Electronic Instruments of Expulsion: Searches as Control of Aliens
by Heiner Busch
Both in Germany’s electronic search system INPOL as well as in the Schengen information system SIS, the first supra-national search system, the majority of information pertains to aliens who are to be turned away if they attempt to cross the border into the European Union or who are to be expelled if they come into contact with the police. Only a tiny fraction of the total list of names involves persons on police wanted lists because of criminal activity. This is revealed in the statistics of both systems.

Not „Impenetrable“ – Controls and Surveillance at Schengen’s Outer Borders
by Jürg Lüdi and Heiner Busch
In the 1990 Execution Accord, the signatory states agreed on a special standard for the control and surveillance of their outer borders. Above all „aliens from third countries“ were to be subjected to particular scrutiny. This led to an increase and expansion of personnel and technical facilities for the police and border control forces. Some countries such as the Schengen newcomer Austria even bestowed this responsibility on their armed forces for the purpose of guarding its borders. And despite enormous efforts the borders have simply not become „impenetrable“, as delegations of the Schengen Executive Council recently announced. Further efforts are to be forthcoming to achieve the impossible.

German-Polish Police Co-operation
by Helmut Dietrich
During the course of the past several years numerous agreements have been sealed between Germany and Poland aimed at improving police activities and migration control mechanisms along the common border of the two countries. While on the German side the primary goal was to seal off its borders for reasons of domestic politics by pointing to the potential dangers of „organised crime“ entering into Germany from the east, the Polish rationale for the co-operation was dictated by its desire to be accepted into the EU. In day-to-day practice these agreements are considerably less important than the co-operation achieved in common task performance throughout the border region.

Hooking Up to the Europe of the Police – Switzerland and Schengen
by Heiner Busch
In the meantime Switzerland is completely surrounded by Schengen countries, making Switzerland’s borders Schengen outer borders. Despite this fact, Swiss citizens are not treated as third country aliens. Third world citizens and persons from CEE countries are predominantly subjected to special scrutiny. This practice has now been confirmed by a Memorandum of Understanding by Switzerland, Germany and Austria. In a series of bilateral agreements, Bern is seeking to obtain access to the police and alien police aspects of the Schengen co-operation policies – without liberalizing its freedom of movement policies.

The Growing Veil of Surveillance
by Albrecht Maurer
Article 2 of the Schengen Agreement orders the abolition of interior border controls between countries within the Schengen Agreement Area and also bans the establishment of second borders for the purpose of border control activities. This regulation is being constantly subverted. In December of 1994, Bavaria became the first German state to write the authority to carry arbitrary personal identity controls into its own police law. Such identity controls may be performed anywhere within 30 kilometres from the state border independent of due cause as well as on intra-regional thoroughfares and on premises which serve international travel traffic. In practice, this veil of surveillance has been extended to reach into the major cities. In the meantime, a number of – predominantly CDU-ruled – German ‘Länder’ have followed suit.

Grand Coalition of Domestic Security – State Police Legislation
by Martin Kutscha
Bugging and thus the necessity revisions of the German constitution required to put it into law have been the subject of broad public debate. What is currently receiving much less attention is the escalation and expansion of police legislation taking place in the German ‘Länder’. These include such legal means as: police prohibition of entry into certain areas, police detention, police control of persons with no just cause or no grounds of suspicion and wire-tapping and other methods of clandestine surveillance. The differences between the legislative activities in the CDU- and the SPD-ruled ‘Länder’ are negligible.

Security and Order in the Cities
by Martina Kant and Norbert Pütter
In the autumn of 1997 Minister of the Interior, Manfred Kanther, proposed an „Action Security Net“ to his colleagues in the Ministries of the Interior in the German ‘Länder’ aimed at improving citizen security in the inner city areas of Germany’s major cities. Although the reactions to Kanther’s proposal were mixed, it does appear that the willingness to lower the thresholds of police intervention is a common goal in the hope that more cleanliness and orderliness will give people a greater sense of security. The expulsion of undesirable fringe groups from public streets and areas is the explicit goal of this policy.