EU free movement of people: fully recovered from or suffering from long Covid?

The free movement of people (FMP) was one of the first victims of the Covid-19 pandemic in Europe. Calls for better coordination often remained unheard in the initial phase of hectic border controls and closures (March-June 2020) and mostly resulted in soft Commission guidelines and Council recommendations. Nevertheless, most restrictions on the FMP were lifted after summer 2020 and could be largely avoided in later waves of the pandemic. We argue that the resilience of the FMP, a fundamental principle of the EU, ultimately depends on policies - borders, welfare, and health - which are still member state competence. We explain the observed variation between these policies and between different border regions by the strength of pre-existing coordinative transgovernmental structures. Our analysis is based on a case study of German policies affecting the FMP and draws on quantitative data concerning mobile EU citizens and qualitative interviews with policy-makers and “mobility brokers” such as advisors for frontier commuters.