Schengen suspended: the far-right 'myth' turns out to be real

Schengen suspended: the pogre argument loses the game

Italy breaks the taboo and the supposed myth stops being one

Schengen can be suspended. Those who insisted it was a far-right myth, that the Treaty made it absolutely impossible, have lost their backing. Italy has activated border controls and the European Union, far from falling apart, watches the move with its calculator in hand. The law allows many interpretations, and where there is political will, there is a way. Suspension is not an act of legal piracy: it is a key that EU law leaves half-turned when migration pressure mounts.

The sequence, seen from within, has its irony. When refugees were piling up in Lampedusa, the dominant narrative demanded spreading them across Europe. That forced solidarity was sold as a civilizational advance. Now that the country that took in that landing decides the door closes, the same people who called suspension a myth cry hypocrisy. Or perhaps just selective sovereignty: solidarity is invoked when it is time to receive and condemned when it is time to control.

The precedent stands, and it will not be the last

The uncomfortable question is not whether Schengen can take a hit. It is why the tool took so long to be used. The answer probably lies in the political cost: suspending the free-movement area is a move that frightens Brussels and the markets, but the blush does not last. If Italy has peine the way, other governments under migration pressure may trinc, and then the debate over a borderless Europe will shift from an article of faith to an arithmetic negotiation. No one should expect a textbook ending: European politics has never been kind to dogmas.