dw.com
When Hodges, on the other hand, wants to move tanks or other heavy vehicles and weaponry across Europe, he needs to stop at every national - sometimes regional - border and deal with unique controls.
"I think most people would be astounded to find out what we have to do," he said, "to submit a list of all the vehicles, the drivers, what's in every truck - which they don't do with gigantic commercial trucks moving back and forth across borders."
He says in many European countries, it takes weeks to get the permission to move through. In Germany every state requires its own procedure.
I think I wrote this myself (and had someone else mocking me because he thought that there's no such red tape), but I don't know when or where.
S O
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I recall driving freely across several borders in Europe in the late 80s, early 90s. But I surmise those open borders disappeared with the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks. Or did this retrenchment start earlier?
ReplyDeleteAnd what of the procedures in every German state? Does that include red tape from one German state to another? Or are you saying that some German states have different rules at national border crossings. For example border crossings to Poland from either Brandenburg or Meklenburg?
The Schengen Agreement is still in force; a couple governments are merely using an emergency exception to limit migration.
DeleteThe movement of armed forces through countries is an altogether different thing; it's about sovereignty to only allow invited foreign armed forces into the country.
I forgot what the differences between the German states were (it's not about the natioanl borders) in regard to military administrative marches. Those limitations would likely disappear anyway once the state of tensions was announced by the federal government (which may take days because it requires a 2/3 majority in the federal parliament), but again - I forgot the details.
The issue may be about the states having the policing monopoly save for border, railway station & airport policing.
The problem in the article is all about how NATO (the organisation and the member governments) didn't take the core job of NATO seriously until 2008/14, and then they were still terribly slow at doing anything.
It's even becoming worse. The Polish minister of defence seems to be a nutjob and hate Germans - hardly someone with whom you can prepare for defence.