23 september 2015, will schengen survive ?

As an eternal optimist, my answer will of course be yes, but it is also reasoned, as it was when the same question was so persistently asked of the euro. With the siren call from germany encouraging the swell and hungary's advertised rush to create a razor-wire curtain across the eu's border together conspiring to accelerate the movement as winter began to loom, germany, austria and then croatia rather retracted their open welcome, throwing up those internal schengen borders which are supposed to have dissapeared. It is not the first time: france and denmark both did it to impede migration from lampadusa in italy in 2011; just two notable examples of dozens of occasional suspensions. Today's crisis is bigger: then it was 50, 000 souls entering the eu, now it is around 500, 000. The principle though remains the same: migrants and anyone else can wander around the visa-free area of the whole united kingdom or the whole of the united states or the whole of schengen. The difference of course is that schengen includes different countries, which makes a fundamental requirement of such an area, securing external borders, rather harder and ultimately a matter of trust. Albeit harshly, hungary - and now croatia and others - argue that this is all they are doing (as in this chilling video) and that otherwise germany and the others need to secure their own external border. Trust is a precious flower easily wilted. Yesterday's decision to finally force through a quota-based allocation system for refugees, over the heads of hungary and its colleagues, was an almost unprecedented use of the force of law over consensus. This at least shows an almost-unity of purpose and an ability to act in the face of a soul-sapping policy vacuum, but will do nothing to protect that precious flower that schengen is built on. Difficult days then, to get worse before they get better, but there is a deep well of trust and aspiration schengen draws on which we must hope has not run dry just yet.