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migration

The Pact on Migration and Asylum gave the EU a solidarity framework in which member states can choose between relocating asylum seekers, paying into a common fund, or providing operational support. The flexibility was the political price of getting it agreed. It is also the reason the mechanism has never produced relocation at the scale its drafters imagined: given a menu, most governments choose the option that involves writing a cheque rather than issuing a residence permit.

• Internal border checks cost the European economy an estimated several billion euros a year in freight delays and cross-border commuting friction.
• Each reintroduction weakens the norm that made the next one unnecessary.
• Once controls exist, removing them requires a government to declare a problem solved — a claim no interior minister volunteers.