Schengen Acquis Over Time

Abstract

Since the very onset of the European Union, the founding fathers and policy-makers have tasked themselves with the goal of free movement within the single market and ideally within united and borderless Europe. The two seemingly separate and independent developments allowed for the realization of these early aspirations for unhindered circulation within the territory of the larger EU; the gradual and step-by-step abolition of barriers to trade and movement in the name of economic integration as orchestrated by the Community on one hand, and the intergovernmental agreement binding a handful of states outside of the EU legal framework on the other. Intimately intertwined with the Single European Market, the latter-although originating from without of the European Community legislation- has significantly contributed to shifting from purely economic freedoms of workers to encompass also further non-economic rights of the remaining public. The incorporation into the EU legal framework and its current status can only hardly be explained without taking into account Schengen in tandem with the SEA. The aim of this paper is to examine the implications of inclusion with the Amsterdam Treaty of the Schengen Agreement into the web of European legislation, as well as to disentangle the very process of this incorporation.