Schengen, Croatia and freedom
What Croatia's inclusion in the Schengen area means for Europe and the world. Federico Guiglia's notebook
The Europe of free movement adds a seat at the table, because from 1 January 2023 one more friend is arriving: Croatia, which yesterday celebrated a historic day. In the same hours in which its national football team kicked super favorite Brazil out of the World Cup on penalties, Zagreb snatched the go-ahead from the 26 states of the Schengen area (22 EU countries plus Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein) to enter and expand the world's largest border-free zone.
The Schengen area had not grown for ten years and the green light for the welcome Croatia contrasts with the red light for Romania and Bulgaria, nations that too, and for eleven years, had pleaded the same cause. But enlargement was decided unanimously and Austria and the Netherlands blocked the requested entry. An entry that entails the abolition of land, sea and air controls at the borders of the member states. Vienna fears waves of irregular migrants, while Amsterdam disputes the rule of law in the two countries left at the window for now.
But between passes and fails, Europe confirms itself as the goal of an increasingly common dream and destiny, despite the many, often well-founded, disputes that from many quarters – including Italy – continually turn to the "Brussels policy". . Faced with Great Britain and Brexit for which London is already paying the negative repercussions not only in the economic sphere, and which perhaps the majority of Britons today would not do again, the European Union and Western values represent a strong attraction. As unfortunately also testified by the tragedy of Ukraine, which was invaded and attacked by Putin due to its choice of pro-European camp.
The reason is as simple as it is profound: the largest area of free movement on the planet is also the largest and most coveted place of freedom. Which is like health: it is appreciated above all when it is lost, as the crisis in Iran teaches us, where there is a people in revolt against a theocratic regime accustomed to violence to shut up the mouths of young people and women, who are fighting for elementary rights, yet trampled on.
It is therefore no coincidence that the continent capable of lowering its border barriers is also the land of freedom, that is, of peace between peoples, equality between people and opportunities for all.
A beacon of good hopes in times of war and ayatollahs.
(Published in L'Arena di Verona, Il Giornale di Vicenza and Bresciaoggi)
www.federicoguiglia.com
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/croazia-schengen/ on Tue, 13 Dec 2022 06:57:32 +0000.