Discussion Highlights:
Building Schengen: Origins in the Coal and Steel Community (1952), the Treaty of Rome (1958), and the Schengen Agreement (1995), creating 16,000 km of invisible internal borders through a single market and shared enforcement mechanisms.
Asylum strains: Germany and Austria have received over half of all EU asylum seekers during the Syrian and Ukrainian crises, revealing the breakdown of the Dublin allocation rules under free movement.
Humanitarian crisis at the external border: Approximately 30,000 people have died attempting Mediterranean crossings in the last decade, underscoring the need to address smuggler-driven journeys.
EU–Turkey precedent: The 2016 agreement cut irregular crossings from about 1 million to 30,000 and deaths from 1,100 to 80 within a year, demonstrating the efficacy of safe-third-country arrangements.
Safe-third-country proposals: Knaus calls for similar pacts with West African states to deter Canary Islands crossings, coupled with procedural guarantees under international law.
Regular migration frameworks: Expansion of refugee resettlement and labour migration via planned pathways—in the style of Canada or Australia—to meet workforce needs and reduce reliance on smugglers.
European deterrence: With U.S. reliability in doubt, Europe must bolster its own deterrent capacity—including possibilities such as a German nuclear option—and integrate frontline democracies.
EU enlargement: A clear, merit-based accession roadmap for Ukraine, Moldova, and Western Balkan candidates is essential to reinforce democracy, security, and prosperity.
Engaging the next generation: Francesca Knaus highlights a gap in how Europe’s peace “miracle,” the lived threat of modern warfare, and climate urgency are communicated to younger Europeans.
About Gerald Knaus
Gerald Knaus is an Austrian social scientist and co-founder and chairman of the European Stability Initiative (ESI), which he helped establish in Sarajevo in June 1999. An alumni of the University of Oxford, the Institut d’Études Européennes in Brussels, and the Johns Hopkins University Bologna Center, Knaus taught macroeconomics at the State University of Chernivtsi in Ukraine, worked for NGOs and international organisations in Bulgaria and Bosnia-Herzegovina and directed the Lessons Learned and Analysis Unit of the EU pillar of UNMIK in Kosovo.
He is a founding member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and served as an Associate Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Knaus was a Mercator-IPC Senior Fellow in Istanbul and a Europe's Futures Fellow at the IWM here in Vienna.
Knaus co-initiated and co-negotiated the 2016 EU–Turkey migration statement, authored Can Intervention Work? (2011) and Welche Grenzen brauchen wir? and received the Karl Carstens Award in 2021. He lives in Berlin.
Further Reading & Resources
European Stability Initiative profile: https://www.esiweb.org/esi-staff/gerald-knaus
Rumeli Observer blog: https://www.esiweb.org/rumeliobserver
Piper Verlag author page: https://www.piper.de/autoren/gerald-knaus-6417
Twitter: https://twitter.com/rumeliobserver
Gerald and Francesca Knaus's new book, Welches Europa Bracuhen Wir? is available to pre-order from amazon.de and will be published at the end of August 2025.
Ivan Vejvoda is Head of the Europe's Futures program at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM Vienna) implemented in partnership with ERSTE Foundation. The program is dedicated to the cultivation of knowledge and the generation of ideas addressing pivotal challenges confronting Europe and the European Union: nexus of borders and migration, deterioration in rule of law and democracy and European Union’s enlargement prospects.
The Institute for Human Sciences is an institute of advanced studies in the humanities and social sciences. Founded as a place of encounter in 1982 by a young Polish philosopher, Krzysztof Michalski, and two German colleagues in neutral Austria, its initial mission was to create a meeting place for dissenting thinkers of Eastern Europe and prominent scholars from the West.
Since then it has promoted intellectual exchange across disciplines, between academia and society, and among regions that now embrace the Global South and North. The IWM is an independent and non-partisan institution, and proudly so. All of our fellows, visiting and permanent, pursue their own research in an environment designed to enrich their work and to render it more accessible within and beyond academia.
For further information about the Institute:
https://www.iwm.at/
