Border policy is a sovereignty question, not just a security one

For the past decade, the mainstream European debate about border control has been conducted almost entirely in the language of security. We are told that borders must be controlled to prevent terrorism, to combat trafficking, to ensure orderly entry. All of these are real concerns. None of them is the primary one.

The primary question is simpler and more fundamental: does a political community have the right to decide who becomes part of it?

I ask this not as a rhetorical question but as a genuine one, because I have found that many people in contemporary European debate are genuinely uncertain about the answer — or have convinced themselves that the question is not legitimate to ask.

A country that cannot decide who joins it has not solved a security problem. It has stopped being a self-governing one.

The conflation of border control with security has two effects, both bad. The first is that it makes the case for control contingent on demonstrable security benefits — and security benefits are notoriously difficult to demonstrate. Every time someone argues that border measures have reduced crime, opponents can find a study suggesting otherwise. The debate becomes empirical when it should be principled.

The second effect is that it frames the question in purely negative terms. Borders are presented as barriers to be justified by the harms they prevent, rather than as expressions of something positive: the right of a community to maintain its own character, make its own choices, and bear the consequences of those choices itself.

I am aware that this argument can be and has been misused. The right of self-determination is not a blank cheque for any policy a majority happens to prefer. But the existence of abuses does not invalidate the principle. What we need is not to abandon the concept of sovereignty but to think about it more carefully.