Schengen and queues

I must admit – I am not a EU lawyer, and I don’t know *all* the consequences of joining (or not) the Schengen treaty. I suspect, for example, that joining *would* then have consequences on how extra-EU migration is regulated, and hence also how to respond to the refugee catastrophe. So maybe the UK does want to stay out of it, if it wants its own distinct policy for immigration with respect to non-EU countries.

Let me focus on the consequences of Schengen for normal people. This agreement came into force in 1990, between many EU countries, and allowed the movement of citizens without border control (has nothing to do with free movement of people, which is a more general right of EU citizens). For millions of people, it made queues at the many land borders in the continent, and at airports, a thing of the past.

The UK never signed up to this, I'm not sure why. I’ve lived in the UK almost 17 years. I have traveled to the EU at least 6 times per year on average (work and holidays), flying. The passport control queues on coming back at the airport were on average 20 minutes (but often way more, causing loss of train connection, inconvenience if someone was waiting for me, etc.). So I have spent in queues something like 2040 minutes, i.e. 34 hours.

Consider the annoyance of standing in a queue after a long trip and flight. How do you factor in time with tired children, or the extra burden if you are elderly or disabled? In the simplest case let’s just asses the direct economic cost. A professional earning £30 per hour (that’s more than the average wage of about £12 per hour, but a lot less than a dentist, doctor, lawyer, …) and traveling the same amount as me would be losing £60 per year. Not much perhaps, but add to that the inconvenience. And most of all ask yourself what the point of this is. These are all travelers incoming from the Schengen zone: the EU citizens have the right to come into the UK, and any non-EU people have already been registered and checked.

Let’s also try to ball-park the cost on the border-control agency side and focus on airports. There are about 137 million passengers from the EU per year coming into UK airports (https://www.caa.co.uk/News/Passenger-numbers-at-UK-airports-increase-for-the-third-year-in-a-row/?catid=4294967494) Let’s assume that each passport check takes 1 minute. And that border control staff cost at least £25 per hour (I want to include pension, NI, etc - this is just an estimate, I have not researched precise costs): we are looking at a salary bill of at least £57 million per year. This is likely to be quite larger as I think my cost per hour is underestimating (and I have ignored ports & Chunnel).

£57 million a year. A lot? A little? It depends what for. So what for exactly, in this case? Copy-pasting from above, these checks are on travelers incoming from the Schengen zone: the EU citizens have the right to come into the UK, and any non-EU people have already been registered and checked.

To put this in perspective, you could build two brand-new secondary schools per year with these funds (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4952004.stm). Or else those same border control staff might be working on fighting international drugs trading, or other agency objectives.

Why choose to be just part-in the EU? Some of the benefits come from being full-in. In the case of Schengen, maybe someday the public should come round to asking their MPs why the UK is out, what do we gain by not having the full advantage of traveling without borders.