May 2, 2017

EU to end extra Schengen border screenings

Shannon Vavra

Michael Sohn / AP

The European Commission announced Tuesday that five countries will have to phase out extra border checks they've been using in the Schengen zone by November this year, Reuters reports.

The countries: Germany, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Norway. France, which added border controls after the November 2015 terror attacks, is exempted since it remains in a state of emergency.

The emergency checks were allowed to start in 2015 in response to the refugee crisis, when more than a million people sought asylum in Northern Europe, straining the countries' capacities to deal with that influx. Of the countries concerned, Germany took the most migrants.

Germany is not on board with loosening its border controls now, even though migrant flows have been down, claiming it needs to protect against terrorism.

Why it matters: This could have repercussions in the domestic politics of Germany and other E.U. countries, where immigration and terrorism are hot button issues.

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The year of the mass uprising has collided with the year of the coronavirus lockdown, leaving protest movements around the world stalled. 

The big picture: The enduring images of 2019 are of protest — from Hong Kong to Khartoum, across the Middle East and through much of Latin America. Seemingly overnight, though, social distancing has made such mass demonstrations almost unthinkable.

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Data: The Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins, the CDC, and China's Health Ministry. Note: China numbers are for the mainland only and U.S. numbers include repatriated citizens and confirmed plus presumptive cases from the CDC

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