The Nordic Passport Union and the Nordic Council

Abstract

In this chapter the background and establishment of the Nordic Passport Union will be described as part of Nordic cooperation history, but also the restrictions and limiting factors will be given attention. After the millennium shift the Nordic Passport Union has faced two major developments. The establishment of EU's Schengen Area in 1995 started a process which made all five Nordic countries join in 2001, merging two integration projects into one. During the past 10 years the Nordic Passport Union has faced violations by its members, as border controls have been implemented ad hoc against the common agreement. The dynamics between processes of debordering and rebordering, i.e. debordering of regional boundaries understood as internal and the rebordering of boundaries depicted as external (Schimmelfennig 2021), are here used to describe and analyse the development of the Passport Union and the challenges it has been facing in recent years. The Nordic passport free zone introduced during the 1950s stands as one of the main achievements of the Nordic Council in its early years. The ground for this reform had been prepared in a number of ways previously during the interwar period. Free movement was tightly connected to the creation of a common labour market in the Nordic region, and as such had a great impact on Nordic societies during the Cold War period and beyond. The established Nordic cooperation structures were voluntarily merged with the creation of the European Schengen Area during the 1990s. This process was not met with any considerable opposition and manifested a positive belief in the possibilities to harmonise European and Nordic cooperation. The challenges presented to the open borders after 2010 and the reverses experienced by single Nordic states in respecting this agreement, have put the Nordic passport free zone under pressure. The general atmosphere of promoting debordering policies has lately been challenged by an increasing political narrative and actions promoting rebordering.