DET GRÄNSLÖSA EUROPA

Abstract

The Global Covid-19 pandemic led to disruptions in the European Union. To contain the spread of the highly contagious disease, member states introduced uncoordinated restrictions to the freedom of movement in the Schengen area. This renewed fragmentation and the apparent inability of the European Commission to mitigate and control the situation renewed the theoretical debate of European integration. Past research on crisis has shown that the scope and symmetry of a crisis affects how the integration unfolds, the constitutional and institutional framework also affect these outcomes. When a crisis affects an area where the EU has clear competence along with strong institutions, integration tends to evolve in a neofunctionalistic way. Where it’s the opposite, intergovernmental bargaining drives integration. This thesis aims to analyse if the covid-19 pandemic has had an impact on the Schengen policy in a way that can be explained by examining the integrational theories neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism. The analysis is based on policy documents from three EU institutions, the European Commission, The European Parliament, and The European Council. The results show that supranational actors, like the Commission and the Parliament, advocate for deeper integration of the Schengen codex but are aware of the past failures to do so, which show a combination of neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism. The conclusions that this thesis draws are that the pandemic has revitalized the need for policy reform, according to the documents analysed, but that the classic theories of integration are not substantial on their own to draw accurate predictions on actual integrational outcomes related to Schengen.