When examining the effects of communitarisation upon justice and home affairs cooperation, EU policy on the guarding of its external borders offers an unusual case study. The debate has yet to cohere around any single policy image, and three competing visions can be discerned. The first is a national perspective, which views the EU as a means of binding in other governments to the regulation of national borders. Each seeks to maximise their power over their partners but giving away as little discretion. The continued lifting of internal borders is seen as contingent upon this success. A second policy image, one rooted in the Commission and in Frontex, views the Schengen Area as a given, and the creation of common tools to regulate the border as a natural next step. The third, nested in the European Parliament, views borders policy as a part of building the EU polity and establishing the EU's place in the world. Progress is often contingent on these three images overlapping in some way, leading to odd policy results such as the Kaliningrad border traffic arrangement.
