Pandemic bordering: domestic politicisation, European coordination, and national border closures in the COVID-19 crisis

Abstract

When the member states imposed unilateral restrictions on the cross-border movement of persons and goods in their initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the EU appeared to relapse into the ‘politics trap’ of earlier integration crises. However, our analysis of entry restrictions for persons in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland from the end of 2019 to the summer of 2022 shows no systematic relationship between domestic politicisation and national border closures. Rather, border closures followed the course of the pandemic as well as EU recommendations. Our findings suggest that the EU was able to escape the ‘politics trap’ thanks to the exogenous and symmetrical nature of the crisis and effective EU-level policy coordination.

Power and legitimacy during emergency politics: a democratic audit of responses to the Covid-19 crisis

“…The Commission, for one, managed to exercise some institutional power as it closed the EU's external borders, which it legitimized with discourses that invoked an international security frame, and introduced 'green lanes' to facilitate the 'free flow' of goods and transport as well as of essential workers, healthcare professionals and patients, which it legitimized using an identity frame about all being members of the Single Market (Wolff, Ripoll Servent, and Piquet 2020). Notably, as testimony to the success of EU level action through the influence of its soft recommendations and horizontal coordination (Freudlsperger et al 2024), during the second wave of contagion beginning in October 2020, reimposition of country-wide or regional lockdowns did not involve border closures in most Schengen countries and member-states, suggesting EU output and throughput legitimacy.…”