Relations of Kin-state and Kin-minorities in the Shadow the Schengen Regime
Relations of Kin-state and Kin-minorities in the Shadow the Schengen Regime

Summary/Abstract: The ten new Member States of the EU accompany the Eastward enlargement with the acceptance of Schengen acquis in two phases. While these countries have extended cross-border relations and policy towards kin-minorities living beyond the (external) border of the EU, the Accession Treaty defi nes a rigid adaptation process that ignores existing economic, cultural and people-to-people contacts. This article describes not only the stakeholders of this game but also its legal, geographical, political and ethnical circumstances at both the Union and national levels. The Schengen regime is fundamentally about re-interpreting national borders and their meanings in regards to the movement of persons. As it does so, Schengen’s philosophy has been that national sovereignty should no longer act as a controlling principle for the movement of persons across state borders. Instead, border-control has been designed around the absence of borders for some (i.e. those coming from other sovereign states within the system) and has been reinforced for others coming from other sovereign states outside of the system. This underlying philosophy directly confl icts with a motivating principle of border control in many CEE countries: kin minorities and persons coming from kin states should have privileged access to the territory irrespective the state’s Schengen status. The transformation of border controls from a system based on an individual’s ethnicity to one based exclusively on the individual’s provenance (i.e. where is he or she coming from) creates new frictions.

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