News & insights

Olters, Jan-Peter (2024). ‘Letter: Germany is wrong to torpedo Schengen to buy off its populists,’ Financial Times, 9 October 2024. Letter: Germany is wrong to torpedo Schengen to buy off its populists (ft.com)

Populist threats cannot be averted by knee-jerk reactions and populist responses (“German move to impose border checks ‘reopens old wounds’”, Financial Times, 7 October 2024). As recent state elections confirmed, this sort of “populism-lite” policy response increases the social acceptability of neo-nationalism while leaving the underlying challenges unaddressed.

Any sustainable response to migration issues must be based on the explicit recognition that first, conflict and climate are likely to amplify migratory pressures; and second, the economic exclusion of refugees from society encourages the very behaviour that the populist right exploits in its propaganda.

Instead of torpedoing the Schengen system of frictionless travel, one of the main achievements of the European project, it would be helpful to reflect on the experience of societies that have managed to build prosperity on the integration of large numbers of foreign workers while insisting on the primacy of local traditions, with severe penalties for those who break the rules.

For Germany, two changes to existing policies could be the starting point for a migration policy that takes into account the interests of the state, its citizens and incoming migrants alike.

First, when temporary permits are granted, the government and the migrant would sign an individual contract specifying the state’s support and the corresponding expectations of how the refugee should behave. Failure to comply would result in the rejection of any application for residency.

Second, migrants should be allowed to find work in order to (i) become self-sufficient (and reduce their dependence on welfare programmes); (ii) learn the language “on the job” and (iii) be spared the humiliation of being seen as a failure by their families, who often have sponsored their flight in the expectation of future remittances.

This early phase would thus constitute a “probationary period” in which society and the migrants themselves could assess the respective benefits of permanent residence.