Sweden is now in NATO, and the map of Europe continues to fill in further as regional integration grows. Sweden was already part of the European Union’s mutual protection pact. Still, the most significant aspect of this is if Sweden were to be attacked, the United States would also come to Sweden’s defense. We probably would have anyway, but now it is a legal guarantee. This is a good thing for everyone in the northern hemisphere.
Now the question becomes… what next?
This year
Bulgaria and Romania are expected to join the Schengen Area on December 1st this year.
Cyprus is aiming to join the Schengen area this year. Source
This decade
After Ukraine defeats Russia, they are going to apply to join NATO and hopefully will join NATO swiftly. They are the only current candidate with an application to join NATO.
More and more Britons support rejoining the European Union. I hope they do and join Schengen while they are at it.
As I wrote in a previous blog post, Montenegro is the most likely country to join the European Union next. Every Balkan state is either a member or a candidate to join. As the remaining Balkan States, Moldova, Ukraine, and Georgia, pass reforms to align with the European Union acquis, they will join as they meet the acquis. The process cannot be rushed. NATO membership offers these countries military security as they integrate into the European Union.
The remaining neighbors to the Schengen Area do not meet the requirements to join.
The whole process becomes more apparent if we significantly simplify the above map and shade all NATO/Schengen/EU countries the same color, with two more colors for NATO and EU applicants:
Most of Europe is already integrated into one of these three institutions. After Bosnia, Georgia, and Ukraine join NATO, only Andorra, Kosovo, Moldova, and Serbia will be left out of one of these three treaties. Belarus will remain a Russian puppet state, and Armenia’s future is currently unknown.
Based on the democracy index, corruption perceptions index, and press freedom index, these countries should have little difficulty joining Schengen as they have better scores in all three categories than the worst performers in Schengen today in these three categories.
What is interesting is that Bulgaria and Romania do not meet the requirements based on the data I have collected. Romania just barely misses, with its Democracy Score 0.1 points below the minimum in Schengen today. Fortunately, those countries will join by the end of the year, and no new countries will be shaded cyan on the map above.
Cyprus would have joined Schengen years ago if it had not been for the issue of Northern Cyprus.
So, to me, that is the obvious next expansion of Schengen. The UK needs to rejoin the European Union, and then the Schengen Area needs to expand outside of the European Union. The most obvious place for Schengen to expand is the United States and Canada, since we share a border. The Southern African Customs Union already includes Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa, so that would be a merger. Those countries need visa-free access to the European Union along with Ghana. It is patently absurd that citizens of Ghana need airport transit visas, but citizens of North Korea, Russia, and Saudi Arabia do not. Ghana almost makes the map above, but they have seen the Democracy Score decline over the last few years. Hopefully, they can move back on track. I have hope for them.
If there was a merger of the Southern African Customs Union and Schengen Area, the main advantage would be not having to go through customs. This could be easily solved through eGates. The issue could also easily be solved by following the United Kingdom’s lead and expanding customs eGates to citizens of the other countries shaded light blue in the map above. The only remaining benefit then would be the right to live and work in the European Union, which is a major benefit and the mutual ability of European citizens to live and work in these other countries. The European Union might be hesitant to do this because there is already a brain drain problem in the rest of the world and the United States. But this can only be solved by the European Union developing the legal system that makes tech entrepreneurship as attractive as in the United States because the United States is never going to stop issuing work visas to knowledge workers because we have too much of a benefit, so the European Union might as well work towards expanding EFTA to include the US and Canada.
This is the obvious next step in expanding the Schengen area, which is to expand visa-free travel to Southern African Customs Union citizens and the EFTA and Schengen Area to the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, and Canada.