Schengen zone expands, but border checks persist across EU

As the new year began, the last remaining control posts on Bulgaria’s and Romania’s land borders were lifted. Movement restrictions on the bloc’s sea borders and airports with the two eastern European countries had already been abolished last March.

Both Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU on January 1, 2007 but still needed to comply with and fulfill a number of legal provisions to enter the visa-free Schengen Area.

While the two countries were ready to enter the Schengen Area in 2010 already, there were a series of consecutive objections by other EU member states amid fears that open borders would result in an increase of both legal and irregular migration within the bloc.

The last remaining country that continued to veto the plan to fully integrate Bulgaria and Romania into the Schengen Zone was Austria, which finally relented last month.

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Open borders for all

This opening of borders means that travelers by car and train between the two countries will no longer have to present documents at the official border crossings. 

In the case of Romania, the same applies at its border with Hungary, which is also an EU member state.

And in Bulgaria’s case, it means that no papers will need to be shown at its borders with Greece.

This effectively also links Greece, the easternmost EU state other than Cyprus, to the rest of the Schengen Area, as it will now be possible to travel from Greece into Western Europe and beyond via Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary without ever showing any form of identification — at least in theory.

Closed borders in Central Europe

While the enlargement of the Schengen Area was welcomed by politicians across the bloc, it also comes at a difficult time for the EU.

Many EU nations are making use of provisions to suspend Schengen rules. Germany, for instance, is currently manning all of its borders to its nine neighboring countries tightly in response to a series of violent attacks perpetrated by migrants or rejected asylum seekers.

In December, the Netherlands also introduced border controls for travelers entering from Germany and Belgium. Austria, Italy and Slovenia also keep checks at some of their borders.

During the Olympic Games last summer, France made sure its borders were manned to ensure the sporting event took place peacefully. After softening the border checks at the end of the summer, the new government has recently reintroduced spot checks.

Earlier in 2024, Norway, Denmark and Sweden had also introduced border checks, though these have been discontinued since.

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‘Borders in people’s minds’

These measures, while intended to strengthen public safety in these countries, have also been met with great criticism. 

The European Parliament and the European Commission have both repeatedly stressed that border controls at the internal borders of the Schengen Area must be the “absolute exception” and should only be used as a “last resort” — as was the case, for example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, when closing down borders helped to stop the deadly virus from spreading.

Luxembourg’s interior minister, Leon Gloden, said last month that “(w)e cannot allow borders to re-establish themselves in people’s minds,” adding that Schengen was “one of the EU’s greatest achievements.”

It is perhaps apt that the interior minister of Luxembourg should be one of the most vocal critics of the reintroduction of border checks: The Schengen Area is named after a village in Luxembourg, where the agreement to open European borders was first signed in 1985.

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Doubtful success of renewed border checks

With Bulgaria and Romania joining the free-travel bloc, the Schengen Area now encompasses most EU countries except for Ireland and Cyprus as well as several non-EU but associated countries: Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

But the free movement scheme has effectively been on pause in many places over the past year, raising questions about whether it will continue to be seen as a success story.

The success of keeping border checks has also come under scrutiny. In Germany, for instance, statistics released by the German police force indicate that tens of thousands of people have attempted to enter the country without authorization.

In line with the increase in people being stopped at the border, Germany was also able to send more people back to other EU states, where they had already begun their application for asylum under the so-called Dublin regulation.

But with the border controls mostly being spot checks, only about half of those people were turned back immediately. The other half managed to enter the country and lodge their asylum applications. 

Meanwhile, the German police union GDP estimates that the actual number of unauthorized entries of people turned away is far lower than the official police statistic of “tens of thousands” of cases, questioning whether the deployment of 11,000 police officers to Germany’s borders makes any sense.

With Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser already pledging to renew the border controls “until migration numbers come down,” there’s currently no end in sight to the policy.

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From Greece to Portugal: freedom of movement

As the debate continues over border controls and related methods, the EU is also still working on introducing a new system of entry at its external borders. 

Regardless of nationality, visa and immigration status, anyone coming to or leaving the bloc from outside will in the future need to provide personal information and biometric data to enter, as part of the new Entry/Exit System (EES).

This measure, when rolled out later in 2025, is intended to better control who does and who does not have a right to be in the EU, but has also been subject to criticism for shutting Europe further off from the rest of the world.

In Eastern Europe meanwhile, there’s far more excitement than criticism related to the Schengen Zone and free travel: Bulgarian Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev hailed the move as a “historic event,” highlighting the magnitude of the event:

“From Greece in the south to Finland to the North and all the way to Portugal to the West – you can travel without borders,” he said as fireworks were launched into the air along the country’s border with Greece to mark the occasion.

However, not far from the border, in the Aegean Sea, challenges persist as migrants and refugees continue to face shipwrecks, highlighting the ongoing struggles associated with irregular migration in the region.

With dpa, Reuters

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