Europe’s Fortress is Crumbling — It’s Time for the Schengen Visa System to Fall
By [Kalyan Mukherjee]
In an age when artificial intelligence is writing novels, remote surgeries are being performed by robots, and climate summits dominate global discourse, one would expect that international mobility—arguably one of the most basic aspects of globalization—would be a streamlined, humane process.
But in the heart of Europe, the Schengen visa system stands as a monument to everything the modern world is trying to move beyond: bureaucracy without reason, security without humanity, and exclusivity masquerading as procedure. It is not merely outdated—it is an offense to dignity and intelligence.
We are told this is the era of digitization. Paperless. Carbon-neutral. Inclusive. But try applying for a Schengen visa as a student, researcher, entrepreneur, or professional from the Global South, and the façade collapses. The “system” reveals itself for what it truly is: archaic, rigid, and deeply exclusionary.
Mobility as a Privilege—Not a Right
The Schengen process does not simply assess eligibility; it manufactures suspicion. The very design of the system presumes guilt. Fugitives and traffickers often find loopholes. Meanwhile, ordinary people—academics, conference speakers, parents visiting their children—are subjected to humiliating scrutiny and endless delays.
Worse still is the silent abuse of power: passports withheld for weeks or months with no justification, legal recourse, or explanation. In most countries, the forcible retention of someone’s passport without cause is considered unlawful. Within the Schengen framework? It’s standard operating procedure.
This is not about national security. It is about institutionalized subjugation.
A Colonial Mindset Dressed in Digital Clothing
Let’s call this what it is: a colonial hangover wrapped in digital gloss. A handful of countries continue to act as arbiters of movement, deciding who may enter and who must wait, often based not on real risk, but on arbitrary notions of economic class, origin, and cultural “fit.”
Innovation is punished. Nonlinear careers are distrusted. A software engineer freelancing globally? Too unstable. A writer or researcher with remote income? Unreliable. A speaker invited to a European conference on climate justice? Prove you’ll return home.
Where the world has evolved to embrace remote work and borderless talent, the Schengen system remains shackled to obsolete measures of “legitimacy.”
Europe Risks Losing Its Moral Leadership
The EU can no longer claim to champion human rights, academic exchange, or technological cooperation while it operates a mobility regime that disenfranchises the very people it claims to partner with. If Europe wishes to retain moral leadership in an interconnected world, it must dismantle this gatekeeping architecture.
What’s needed is not just digitization of forms but reimagination of values: transparency in processing, respect for the applicant, and a visa regime rooted in trust, not suspicion.
Because systems built on exclusion don’t last—they rot from within. And in an increasingly decentralized, AI-connected world, this form of bureaucratic elitism is rapidly becoming obsolete.
The Schengen system will fall. The only question is whether it will collapse under its own irrelevance—or be transformed into something just.
