The refugee crisis and the terrorist attacks have of course undermined the Schengen Agreement on open borders, and that, with the euro itself, is one of the two pillars of the whole project.
There are precedents for groups of EU countries going it alone, such as the single currency itself and the Schengen agreement on open borders.
Spain remains strongly pro-European, but Italy's political leaders, playing to public fears about immigration and crime, frequently test the limits of EU laws on open borders and free movement.
The panel's findings were the subject of heated debate in the Senate last week, with each citing the decision to bolster its case for or against restrictions on open borders.
But once-crunchy debates on all sorts of subjects, especially those touching on open borders, free trade and free movement, are turning rancorous.I had not planned to write again about Britain and the European Union for a bit: after five years in Brussels, I am keenly aware of the need to avoid sounding like an obsessive.
There would be a fresh coherence in a union with no à la carte options, a union where all members use the euro, sign up to the Schengen agreement on open borders, contribute to a common border force, and even form a joint military – the "European army" so pilloried in the last weeks of the UK referendum campaign.
"Liberal European doctrine based on open borders and unrestricted immigration principle will be dropped or cause Europe to self-destruct," wrote Pushkov in another tweet, while notoriously clownish Russian nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky declared it was time to say "goodbye" to "dying" France, which he said "will soon turn into Arabistan".
Yasser Othman, Egypt's representative to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, told the independent Palestinian news agency Maan that the talks were focusing on opening border crossings into Gaza, with Egypt mediating between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls the enclave.
He doesn't give lectures on the importance of open borders to individual liberty.
Your cockamamie, pie-eyed theories on the benefits of open borders have taken hold in the weak, greedy minds of our politicians and unleashed havoc in Texas.
