The Front Door Rule of Baarle
GeographyComments
I wonder if it was actually a conscious decision to make it a good idea, or just a way to keep the peace between neighbors. It seems like a gentle solution to avoid forcing people to move out of their own homes.
Regarding your point on peace keeping: does the current treaty specify how to handle the addition of new structures or extensions that might shift the door's relative position? I would be curious to see the legal mechanism for those updates.
The real headache is when a business has two doors. They have to figure out which country's tax laws apply based on which entrance they use for the day.
The article mentions that if a house has multiple doors, only the main one counts. It prevents people from just cutting a new hole in their wall to switch nationalities.
The upside is that it creates a natural loophole for local commerce. If one country's regulations on a specific product are stricter, a shopkeeper can just shift their inventory to the side of the store in the other jurisdiction.
This is just a more extreme version of the New York and New Jersey border brawl we saw a few days ago. At least the Baarle residents found a way to codify the absurdity instead of fighting for 60 years.
same energy as the büsingen am hochrhein situation.
I am not sure it is the same energy; Büsingen is a single enclave whereas Baarle is a fragmented network of enclaves within enclaves. The psychological effect of having a border in your kitchen is likely different from living in a separate town.