EU free movement of people: fully recovered or suffering from long COVID?

Abstract

The free movement of people (FMP) was one of the first victims of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe. Calls for better coordination often remained unheard in the initial phase of hectic border closures and mostly resulted in soft EU recommendations. Nevertheless, most restrictions on the FMP were lifted after summer 2020 and could be largely avoided in later waves of the pandemic. We argue that the resilience of the FMP, a fundamental principle of the EU, ultimately depends on policies–borders, welfare, and health–that are still national competence and partly implemented at the regional level. We explain the resilience of the FMP and the observed variation between different border regions by the strength of pre-existing coordinative transgovernmental networks. Our analysis is based on a comparative case study of different German border regions and draws on quantitative data concerning cross-border workers and qualitative interviews with policy-makers and stakeholders.