More border posts in Europe removed

Frontier posts are to be dismantled across Eastern Europe and passport checks scrapped as the European Union prepares to extend its free travel zone to the borders of Ukraine and Belarus. European justice and interior ministers yesterday agreed that eight former communist nations plus Malta are ready to join continental Europe’s Schengen system, which does away with internal passport controls. On 5 March 1946 at Fulton College, Missouri, Winston Churchill delivered these historic words: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” Times have changed. International herald Tribune’s Stephen Castle writes that from the Baltics to Budapest, lines at border points will be consigned to history on 21 December, in time to help the thousands traveling for Christmas. Next March airports will apply the same rules, allowing in passengers from most other European nations without checking their papers.

Named after the small Luxembourg village where Germany, the Benelux countries, and France signed an agreement in 1985, the Schengen zone will enlarge to an area that extends from Caen in France to Krakow in Poland. Viewed from the EU’s new, former communist countries, this is a symbolic step in the reintegration of the former Soviet satellite states into the European mainstream. Celebrations are being planned in the Baltic States and at the land borders between Poland and Germany, Austria, and Hungary and Slovenia and Italy. With growing concerns over migration and organized crime in Europe, however, there are those who point out that any criminal or illegal migrant who crosses the eastern external border will be able to travel as far as Calais in France without further checks. All new nations have been declared ready but most have had to rectify failings. Slovakian border controls caused particular concern, but the Thursday agreement notes that the problems have been resolved. In Estonia, a failure to retain border guards prompted officials to raise questions about the country’s “capability to guarantee a high level of border checks in the current circumstances.”

Currently, thirteen EU member states participate fully in Schengen: Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Sweden. Norway and Iceland, who are not in the EU, are also members. It was originally hoped that the nine new nations would be admitted last January. Ministers decided to make the new countries wait until 2009 when the Schengen zone was due to be equipped with an updated information system capable of transferring biometric data. The information exchange system is a central element of Schengen because it is designed to help law enforcement agencies compensate for the loss of border controls. Finally, in September, a decision was made to admit the new countries to the old information exchange system until it can be updated, thus clearing their path to Schengen membership this year.

The ending of border checks is expected to increase cross-border trade and bring economic benefits. Hugo Brady, a research fellow at the Center for European Reform in London, argued that there would inevitably be gaps in the new frontier, though he said there was no cause for alarm. “At the best of times borders are porous and land borders are difficult to police with 100 percent certainty even by countries like Finland that attain the gold standard,” he said. “Economic opportunities for criminals increase in parallel with those for legitimate businesses when countries are more open for trade,” Brady added. The quid pro quo is that the Schengen system is supposed to allow its members more sophisticated methods of cooperating to track the activities of organized criminals.