The EU and Border Control: Multilevel Governance in Times of Pandemic

Freedom of movement is a core principle of European integration and a cornerstone of European citizenship. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the securitization of the threat led member states (MS) to recover and boost border control, severely restricting citizens’ right to circulate and putting at risk the normal functioning of the Schengen area. The pandemic was not the first crisis that justified the introduction of restrictions to free circulation in the European Union (EU), but it was the one that resulted in the most severe limitations to mobility within and outside EU’s territory. Also, MS’s uncoordinated action resulted in disparities regarding the degree and severity of the restrictions imposed on European citizens, raising questions on whether MS opportunistically (and abusively) used the idea of serious threat to internal security at the expense of the general good. The negative impact of this inward-looking was countervailed by the European Commission’s activism to avoid unnecessary constraints and return the Schengen area to its normal functioning. Building on the concept of multilevel governance, this paper aims to explore how differentiated integration and multilevel governance was applied to the COVID-19 pandemic management as border control and limitations to circulation goes. Our findings suggest that there was a territorialization of MS’s response that, unless countered, could have resulted in a ‘pandemicisation’ of border’s governance. Our findings also suggest that the European Commission’s policy entrepreneurship was instrumental to regain coordination at the supranational and to prompt policy change, including the reform of the Schengen Border Code.