Systematic controls of persons at all Schengen borders would lower the economic output of the 27 EU countries by 0.19 per cent to 0.47 per cent. That would equal €26.65-65.8 billion or €52.74-130.28 per capita, according to new calculations by the Ifo Institute published yesterday.

“These costs account for only a small part of those sums that could arise through uncontrolled mass immigration,” noted Gabriel Felbermayr, director of the Ifo Centre for International Economics and one of the study’s authors.

Croatia was excluded from the calculation concerning EU states due to a lack of data.

Felbermayr, however, said he believed that the Schengen area was unlikely to collapse completely and that it was far more probable that controls would only be introduced at those borders that are on refugee routes.

“In another scenario we therefore calculated the costs of controls at those borders at which focused border controls into the EU have been reported since summer 2015 in line with article 23 of the Schengen Borders Code,” noted Felbermayr. “This gives us a figure of 0.06 to 0.11 per cent of GDP, which equals €9-5.4 billion, or €17.83 to €30.39 per capita.”

The facts that a large share of trade flows do not take place via road, and that Europe’s intercontinental trade with the rest of the world may be affected by controls at Schengen borders, were not takeninto consideration.

Person controls act like a customs duty of 0.5 per cent on goods trade and of 0.8 per cent on trade in services, the institute calculated. Experiences at the US’s borders with Canada and Mexico show that trucks have a 20-minute wait on average.