ML-Implode News - The Trucker's Nightmare That Could Flatten Europe's Economy

What infuriatesÂ [drivers] may herald a sea change for Europe's economy, business and even society: the erosion of a decades-old system that has allowed borderless travel across 26 countries. Bringing back widespread controls would be a blow for the most visible - or invisible - victory in the 60-year quest for a united Europe, conceived in the rubble of World War II. Free movement in what is called the Schengen area, for the townÂ in Luxembourg where the treaty was signed, took over where bunkers and artillery stood on the Franco-German border and guard towers and barbed wire defined the Iron Curtain between eastern and western Europe.
Now, Germany, Austria, France and Sweden, among others,Â have reintroduced border checkpoints in some places. They are pressured by Europe's biggest refugee crisis since World War II - about 1 million migrants arrived in Greece and Italy in 2015 - terrorist attacks, and the growth of anti-immigrationÂ movements. But the economic cost of dumping Schengen, at a time when growth across the continent is still weak, would be massive.

A permanent return to border controls could lop 470 billion euros ($530 billion) of gross domestic product growth from the European economy over the next 10 years, based on a relatively conservative assumption of costs, according to research published by Germany's Bertelsmann Foundation. That's like losing a company almost the size of BMW AG every year for a decade.

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The Trucker's Nightmare That Could Flatten Europe's Economy