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The editors will present the book in Saarbrücken on 17 September at 7 p.m.
The following text has been machine translated from the German with no human editing
A quick trip to the French bakery or commuting to Luxembourg for work every day – in our German-French-Luxembourg border region, this is part of everyday life. The Schengen Agreement has played a decisive role in this: On 14 June 1985, state secretaries from Belgium, Germany, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands signed it on an excursion boat on the Moselle with the aim of gradually abolishing identity checks in Europe. Around ten years later, on 26 March 1995, the utopia became reality: border barriers and stationary checks were replaced in the Schengen area. More and more European countries joined this model. However, 40 years after it was signed, the agreements reached are not in good shape. Migration, terrorism and the COVID-19 pandemic have meant that European internal borders have suddenly become part of everyday life again.
So what will happen to open borders in 2025? In the publication ‘40 Years of the Schengen Agreement: Europe and its Internal Borders’, Professor Dominik Brodowski, Julia Dittel and Professor Florian Weber have compiled 20 contributions from renowned researchers from Luxembourg to Saarbrücken and Strasbourg to Wroclaw in over 400 pages. This opens up a wide range of perspectives from geography, history, cultural studies, politics, law and social sciences, looking back and forward – combined with the question of where Europe is heading in a world where new borders are constantly emerging. The volume provides a deeper understanding of how the path to open borders in the European Union was taken and where we stand today at a crossroads.
The editors Dominik Brodowski, Julia Dittel and Florian Weber will present the volume on 17 September 2025 at 7 p.m. at the bookshop ‘Bock & Seip’ in Saarbrücken. They will talk about the contents of the book and share their personal impressions of life in our closely intertwined border region. The book presentation is therefore aimed at the interested general public.
Please register by 15 September by emailing city.sb@bock-seip.de or calling 0681 30677-40.
Venue:
Bock & Seip, Futterstraße 2, 66111 Saarbrücken
Anthology:
40 Years of the Schengen Agreement – Europe and its Internal Borders
Edited by Prof. Dr. Dominik Brodowski, LL.M. (UPenn), Julia Dittel, M.A., Prof. Dr. Florian Weber. Nomos, 1st edition 2025, 428 pages. DOI: 10.5771/9783748960683
The publication (including welcoming remarks by Saarland Minister-President Anke Rehlinger and Luxembourg Minister of the Interior Leon Gloden) is part of the series ‘Saarbrücker Beiträge zur Europaforschung’ (Saarbrücken Contributions to European Studies), published by the Cluster for European Studies at Saarland University (CEUS).
The volume is now also available open access at the following link:https://www.nomos-elibrary.de/de/10.5771/9783748960683/40-jahre-schengener-uebereinkommen?page=1
The editors:
Dominik Brodowski is Professor of Europeanisation, Internationalisation and Digitalisation of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure Law, Cluster Professor in the Cluster for European Studies (CEUS), member of the UniGR Centre for Border Studies and Vice-President for Internationalisation and Europe at Saarland University.
Julia Dittel, graduate of the Master's programme in Applied Cultural Studies, is a research assistant in the Department of Social Sciences and European Studies at Saarland University and a member of the UniGR Centre for Border Studies.
Florian Weber is Professor of European Studies with a focus on Western Europe and border regions at Saarland University, Cluster Professor at CEUS and a member of the UniGR Centre for Border Studies.
Questions will be answered by:
Prof. Dr Florian Weber
Department of European Studies
florian.weber@uni-saarland.de
Tel.: 0681 302-64220