LONDON – One of the cornerstones of the European Union is the free movement of people. Twenty-five years ago, 26 of the bloc's 27 members signed on to the Schengen Agreement, which allows passport-free travel across their borders.

But the Schengen Area may become an early casualty of the new coronavirus.

As outbreaks of the coronavirus ramp up across the continent – the number of cases in Italy soared to more than 1,600 on Monda y – many EU countries are increasingly coming under pressure to use a clause in the law allowing for the temporary closure of internal borders in emergencies, even though the World Health Organization says shutting borders is unhelpful and unnecessary. Already, far-right parties in France, Germany and Spain have called for the suspension of the Schengen Agreement.

But Angelos Chryssogelos, an associate fellow in the European Program at Chatham House, a London international affairs think tank, says "if things get really severe," then many governments won't need prodding from far-right parties to seal their borders.

"This is accelerating an ongoing trend for more sovereignty and the closing of borders, so at the moment, many governments are already thinking that way," he explains.

That said, economics may exert a countervailing pressure on member states to keep borders open, Chryssogelos adds.

Richard Whitman, a professor of politics and international relations at the University of Kent, agrees, noting that the epidemic has already effectively closed off China, a huge market for EU manufacturers, and is wreaking havoc on global supply chains. "The economics of the single market are so intertwined that closing borders would just add to the already big economic problems it (COVID-19) is causing. So there will be a lot of collective pressure on states to resist closing borders."

Moreover, Whitman says, "the mechanics are very difficult since Schengen, as they've eliminated all border control points. In some cases, they'd have to recreate them from scratch. So there are practical reasons not to do it."

What's more likely, at least in the short term, is European countries will close their external borders – borders with non-EU member countries. "They'll call it a hygiene problem," Chryssogelos says.

But when it comes to closing external borders, distance matters. It's easier to stop people coming in from, say, China or Iran, Whitman says. But what about Switzerland, which is surrounded by EU states? "These borders have long disappeared, so that's an additional complication."

Accordingly, there's also a growing chance that far-right parties will use the coronavirus as a pretext to reignite fears over migration, an issue that's been pushed to the backburner since the migrant crisis of 2015-16, when Europe experienced a surge of refugees from the Middle East and Africa. That's especially likely, Chryssogelos says, if there are widespread outbreaks of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, where many countries "have little capacity to deal with it."

While there's a popular perception that Brussels wields great control over EU states, that's not really true, and each country has the autonomy to handle the crisis as it sees fit. In fact, Whitman says, public health is not a key competency of the EU, mainly because each state has its own public health care system.

Still, Chryssogelos says, the EU will see its role as encouraging members to cooperate and share information. "It will argue that these are the tangible benefits of being in the EU." In fact, Brussels has already brought in ministers from member states to discuss common measures, and another meeting is scheduled for Wednesday .

There is one area where Brussels does call the shots: forcing members to adhere to strict restrictions on deficit spending. Its inflexible demands for austerity in the wake of the 2008 Great Recession exacerbated the ability of states to recover from the downturn, because it slowed growth and kept unemployment needlessly high, many economists say.

Some forecasters are saying that it's increasingly likely that the new coronavirus will spark a global recession. On top of that, EU countries — and many other countries worldwide — could soon be under pressure to spend huge sums of cash to deal with outbreaks.

So, Whitman says, it's a "great question" whether Brussels will this time allow members more leeway to push up debt to combat the double whammy of a simultaneous health crisis and economic downturn. And also whether there will be calls for the European Central Bank to flood the bloc with euros to stimulate growth.

In 2008, the recession was caused by failures in the banking and financial services sector, but if there's a coronavirus-sparked recession it will particularly decimate manufacturing. And the EU's biggest economic engine, Germany, is heavily dependent on manufacturing exports.

So while Germany has historically argued for austerity and nonintervention, Whitman says, in this case "we might see Germany taking the lead in pushing for intervention and looser rules on deficit spending."

