The Nordic Passport Union and the Nordic Council

In this chapter the background and establishment of the Nordic Passport Union will be described as part of Nordic cooperation history, but also the restrictions and limiting factors will be given attention. After the millennium shift the Nordic Passport Union has faced two major developments. The establishment of EU’s Schengen Area in 1995 started a process which made all five Nordic countries join in 2001, merging two integration projects into one. During the past 10 years the Nordic Passport Union has faced violations by its members, as border controls have been implemented ad hoc against the common agreement. The dynamics between processes of debordering and rebordering, i.e. debordering of regional boundaries understood as internal and the rebordering of boundaries depicted as external (Schimmelfennig 2021), are here used to describe and analyse the development of the Passport Union and the challenges it has been facing in recent years.