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Is Europe’s Passport-Free Zone Breaking? · IMI Podcasts

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Czechia's Prime Minister says his country will one day need an army on its border with Germany.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: The danger he names is migrants coming from the West.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: His government, he added, is preparing.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: What those preparations involve, the Prime Minister has not explained.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Germany belongs, like Czechia, to the Schengen area, the passport-free zone built so you could drive from Prague to Dresden without stopping.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you own an EU passport or a European residence permit, that freedom is a large part of its value.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: So how did one country's migrant program push European leaders toward Czechs inside their own free travel zone?
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: The trail starts in Madrid and ends at a summit that agreed on three sentences.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Andrei Babisch made the remark in Brussels on the second day of a European Council summit in October 2026.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Czechia may have to defend our border at some point, he said, if current trends continue.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was his second warning in less than a week.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: On his own Sunday program, next to First Deputy Prime Minister Karel Havlicek, he waved a German newspaper article at the camera.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: One day, he said then, Czechia would need an army on our border with Germany.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Neither appearance came with a plan or a date.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: His Anno party belongs to the far-right Patriots for Europe group in the European Parliament.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: In opposition, Babisch called the EU's Pact on Migration and Asylum the greatest betrayal in modern Czech history.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: The pact's rules took effect in June 2026.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Four months later, the man who fought it leads the government in Prague.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Look at a map, and the warning gets stranger.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Czechia has four neighbors Germany, Poland, Austria, and Slovakia, and every one of them belongs to the Schengen area.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: So an army on the German side would guard a crossing that European law says should have no checkpoint at all.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Checks between two Schengen members count as internal border controls.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: The Schengen Borders Code allows them only as a temporary, last resort measure.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Under Article 25A, a member state facing an unforeseeable grave threat may reimpose checks for one month without prior notice.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Controls on that basis cannot pass three months in total, even if prolonged.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Temporary has become a flexible word.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: In July 2026, Commission records listed eight Schengen states with reintroduced internal controls: Austria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and Sweden.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Three of those eight are Czechia's own neighbours.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Italy, for its part, has checked its Slovenian border since June and has notified Czechs until December.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Stephen Barnes, architect of Sierra Leone's Go for Gold citizenship program, calls the EU's immigration policy a complete dog's breakfast.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Europe's leadership, in his view, is completely out to lunch.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: On the Czech remarks, his verdict is harsher.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: When EU member states contemplate protecting themselves from each other's immigration policies, the absurdity is complete, Barnes says.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: At this rate, the European project is doomed.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Babisch, though, did not aim his sharpest words at Berlin.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: He aimed them at Madrid.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Spain opened the one-time regularization program on April 16, 2026, under Royal Decree 316 of 2026.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: It offers legal status to undocumented migrants already living in the country.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Applicants had to prove they were in Spain before January 1, 2026, with at least five uninterrupted months before applying.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: They also needed a clean criminal record and a fee of€38.28.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called it an act of justice and a necessity.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: His government points to an aging population and labor shortages in hospitality, farming, construction, and care.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: The government projected roughly 500,000 beneficiaries.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: When the window closed on June 30, it had 1,174,978 applications, more than double the forecast.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Spain's last mass regularization in 2005 drew around 692,000.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: This time, Latin Americans filed 67% of the applications, and Colombians alone 25.9%.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: An application is not an approval.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: By July 2nd, officials had admitted 609,737 files to processing, which grants provisional permission to live and work in Spain.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: About 11,000 applicants had a favorable final decision at that point.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Since then, the ministry has published no national update.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Neither side of Spanish politics owns the idea.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: The Conservative People's Party government of José María Aznar organized two regularizations of its own in 2000 and 2001.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Mass regularization in Spain is not a left-wing experiment, says Adam Yuchnievich of BitCitizen.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Successful applicants get a one-year permit valid only in Spain, after which they must move to ordinary residence permits.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Researchers at the European University Institute say the evidence is unclear on whether the program drew more migrants to the EU.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: That uncertainty did not slow the backlash, which arrived with a crisis in July.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Filta is a Spanish city on the North African coast, with a land border with Morocco.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: On July 30th, tens of thousands of people crossed into it.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Spain's Interior Ministry put the number at about 50,000.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Filta's president, Juan Jesus Bibas, estimated 60,000.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: At least 57 people died attempting the crossing, many of them by drowning.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Most of those who entered later returned to Morocco, and Madrid says none reached the Spanish mainland.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Filte has special Schengen rules for this reason.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Spain checks identity documents on flights and ferries leaving the city for anywhere else in the zone.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Madrid blamed smuggling networks that seized on a Supreme Court ruling from June.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Judges found that a maritime boundary is not a physical barrier like a fence, which narrowed summary returns at sea.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Rome moved anyway.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: On August 1, Italy reintroduced checks on arrivals from Spain at its airports and seaports.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: That same day, leaders of 22 member states signed a letter criticizing Spain's regularization, with Italy and Denmark in the lead.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Spain, France, Portugal, Luxembourg, and Ireland withheld their signatures.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sanchez answered with numbers.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: He published Frontex figures for irregular entries between 2021 and 2026, 478,600 through Italy, against 234,760 through Spain.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Madrid imposed reciprocal checks from August 8.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Italy's government also floated suspending Spain from Schengen altogether, and the European Commission rejected the call.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: No mechanism exists to expel a member state from the zone.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: One state cannot unilaterally expel another from the area, says Marie-Laure Basillon-Ganche, a law professor at Lyons-Jean Moulin University.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Border rules inside Europe can change overnight, as Italy showed in August.
• 7:12
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• 7:18
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• 7:24
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• 7:31
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• 7:35
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• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: By October, Spain had swallowed the summit's debate on migration.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Babisch said some politicians there were willing to replace the population just to cling to office.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: He also named the Netherlands, Sweden, and Germany as struggling to integrate refugees.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Asked about reception centers outside the EU, he said to jail smugglers and sink the empty boats.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Sanchez replied at his closing press conference.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: One thing is the blah blah blah, and another is reality, he said, likening Babisch's language to that of Vox, Spain's far-right party.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: In his telling, Spain is a model student of the new asylum rules.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Claims that it serves as a corridor to other member states, he said, are false.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: He accused his critics of inconsistency too.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Italy, whose Prime Minister co-led the Summer Letter, has authorized nearly 500,000 work visas for non-EU nationals through 2028.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Denmark's Mette Frederickson had asked the Commission to examine Spain's policy.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: You come to a country illegally, and suddenly you're allowed to be there legally, she said.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Copenhagen, Rome, and Warsaw pushed amendments on pull factors, and at one point the drafts reached nine paragraphs on migration.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: The adopted text dropped all of that language.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: Its migration passage came to three sentences, and the last one promises to revert to this issue at one of its forthcoming meetings.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Ursula von der Leyen, the Commission's president, said regularization belongs to national governments but can affect others inside Schengen.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Commission figures put the fall in illegal crossings at the EU's external borders at around 55% across 2024 and 2025.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Today, a rule written in one capital can trigger checkpoints in another.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: The new permits confer residence, not citizenship.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Spain's civil code, though, lets nationals of Ibero-American countries apply for Spanish nationality after two years of legal residence.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Most other foreigners wait 10.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: For this group, the gap is large, because two in three applicants are Latin American.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Spanish police commanders have floated a far bigger figure.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Counting relatives who may follow through family reunification, a police union estimates the process could eventually touch 3 million people.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: That number is an internal calculation, not an official statistic.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Reunification is no formality.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: A resident must first show stable income and adequate housing.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Its income floor is 150% of a public benchmark for a two-person household, with more for each extra member.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: For Philippe May, founder and CEO of EC Holdings, the stakes reach the value of EU passports themselves.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: I would not be surprised if some Asian countries or even the USA imposed visa requirements on them within the next 10 years, he says.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: All it takes is a terror attack by a holder of an EU passport, May says.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: That may be the tipping point.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: It is one advisor's forecast, and no such visa rule exists today.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Europe's debate, though, has moved from who enters the bloc to who may cross its inner lines.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Spain now heads into a snap general election on November 29th.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sanchez called it on October 5th, after Congress rejected his government's housing decrees.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Most private polls place the Conservative People's Party first.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Spain's state pollster, in its October survey, puts the socialists about 12 points ahead, and Vox polls in the high teens.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: For investors, the result reaches beyond migration.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: In December 2024, the People's Party used its Senate majority to veto the abolition of Spain's golden visa before Congress overrode it.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Its doors closed to new applicants on April 3, 2025, and the party has yet to say whether it would reopen them.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Brussels has its own calendar.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: EU leaders meet informally on November 13, and a full European Council follows on December 17th and 18th.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: The Commission plans its emergency measures before the end of the year.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Italy's and Spain's checks on each other expire on October 22nd.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Babisch has named no date and no plan.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Twice in one week, though, he has told voters that troops may one day stand on the German border.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Border rules inside Schengen can change on the decision of a single minister.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: IMI's weekly newsletter tracks those changes at imidaly.com/slash newsletter.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Spain's election could reopen a door that closed in 2025.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: In the video on your screen, we ask whether Spain could revive its golden visa and what would have to happen first.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Subscribe and turn on notifications so you hear when Europe's borders move again.