FOR most Europeans, the benefits of integration are clearest when they travel. Crossing most borders, whether for work or pleasure, no longer requires changing currencies or presenting a passport. Yet both great unification projects are under threat. The financial crash and sovereign-debt crisis endanger the euro. Now the Arab spring has brought in thousands of north African boat-people, undermining the Schengen borderless zone.

The response to the euro zone's upheavals has been “more Europe”: a bigger European bail-out fund, more scrutiny by Brussels of national economic and fiscal policies. The reaction to the migration crisis at first involves less Europe. An Italian-French summit in Rome on April 27th called for Schengen's rules to be revised so that national governments can more easily reimpose border controls “in case of exceptional difficulties”. In effect, this already happened when the two countries traded insults over 20,000 Tunisian migrants washed up on the Italian island of Lampedusa. Italy wanted other EU members to take some of the migrants. When they refused, it resorted to a furbizia, a ruse: it issued the boat-people with temporary residence permits, not to settle in Italy, but to speed them on their way across the Alps. France responded by rounding up thousands of migrants near the frontier—at one point even stopping a train from the Italian border town of Ventimiglia—and sending them back to Italy.

There is much theatre in all this. Both Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, are weak and face a loud anti-immigrant far right. Their joint letter to Brussels was an attempt to show they were on top of the crisis. Yet it contained little that had not already been proposed by the European Commission, and it represented a defeat for Mr Berlusconi: he backed France's wish for more internal border controls (against Italy), but got only partial support for his call for greater “solidarity”. France agreed there should be burden-sharing in the case of a “massive influx” of refugees fleeing the war in Libya—but, by implication, today's Tunisian economic migrants are for Italy to manage (albeit with financial and other help to strengthen its borders). And Mr Berlusconi acknowledged that France, in fact, absorbs five times as many migrants a year as Italy.

None of this impresses right-wing and anti-immigrant parties that are on the march across Europe. The Northern League, Mr Berlusconi's coalition partner, which recently questioned whether Italy should even remain in the EU, has complained of Italy's “becoming a French colony”. (It was also upset by Mr Berlusconi's acquiescence in the takeover of Italian companies by French firms and Italy's belated decision to join air strikes on Libya.) In France Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front, says only France's departure from Schengen can stem mass immigration (she also wants to give up the euro).

It is not just poor-world migrants who stir controversy. The long-cherished freedom of the EU's citizens to live and work anywhere in the union is sometimes contested too. Mr Sarkozy clashed bitterly with the European Commission last year over the deportation of Romanies to eastern Europe. Anti-Polish sentiment is on the rise in the Netherlands, which is threatening to expel easterners who have been unemployed for over three months. Geert Wilders, the kingmaker better known for outbursts against Islam, has taken to accusing Poles of committing crimes, being drunk and stealing Dutch jobs.

Despite Eurocrats' faith in the benefits of labour mobility, Germany and Austria have maintained restrictions on workers from new members until the last possible day. On May 1st they must open their borders to workers from eight eastern countries that joined the EU in 2004 (see article). But workers from Romania and Bulgaria, which joined later, face restrictions until 2014. The two countries are being kept out of the Schengen zone largely at the behest of Germany and France, suspicious of corruption and lax border controls.

The euro zone and the Schengen area depend on trust: that each member will run sound public finances, and that each will control its borders. When trust breaks down, integration is in trouble. Yet there is a difference between the two projects. The break-up of the euro would be a severe economic blow to the whole club. More frequent border checks would merely be an inconvenience, slightly gritting up the single market.

Keep it open

That said, the single market is one of the EU's big achievements, and its “four freedoms” of movement—of people, goods, services and capital—are worth defending. So dealing with migration may yet mean more Europe. Just as the commission is monitoring euro-zone economies more closely, so it should also inspect Schengen border controls (these are now subject only to ineffective peer review). The EU also needs a co-ordinated system to sift economic migrants from real refugees so that wildly diverging national rules do not lead to “asylum shopping”.

As well as hardening borders, Europe needs to relieve the external pressure. That requires co-operation from exporting countries to control the outflow and take back illegals. Before the Arab spring, dictators were, in effect, bribed to do this. Such Faustian pacts may well prove harder to strike now that north African strongmen have been toppled (Tunisia and Egypt) or are no longer friendly (Libya). Emerging Arab democracies may expect a better deal—including more aid, freer trade and some managed legal migration. This is the kind of package that the EU is best placed to negotiate.

Yet it still won't stop the migrants from coming. And, when Europe's external borders look like being breached, governments will still insist on being able to secure their own frontiers.





Economist.com/blogs/charlemagne