EU leaders celebrate extension of free borders

European leaders celebrate the end of border controls along a line stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic today as many of the European Union’s newest members join the EU’s passport-free zone.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, his Czech counterpart, Mirek Topolanek, and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso will mark the event in Zittau, on Germany’s eastern fringe, where the country meets Poland and the Czech Republic.

The ceremony is one of several across the EU to mark the entry of nine mostly ex-communist nations into the Schengen area, which formally took place at midnight.

Hours before the end of border controls, Polish and German officials gathered at the Frankfurt an der Oder border crossing, east of Berlin, cutting a symbolic ribbon to open the way to passport-free travel.

“It is a special moment today because today the borders of Europe are about to disappear,” Polish Interior Minister Grzegorz Schetyna said.

Further north in Tallinn, Estonia, Mr Barroso told reporters that the expansion will boost trade and tourism, inject new life into border-region economies and end the hassle of frontier delays.

But the move has also forced the EU to tighten up controls on its new eastern borders to prevent infiltration by criminal gangs, illegal immigrants, and even terrorists.

“It would have been better to wait a year or two longer to abolish the border controls,” said Joachim Herrmann, the interior minister of the German state of Bavaria, which borders the Czech Republic. “It's all a matter of how well protected the border is from Belarus to Poland, from Ukraine to Slovakia.”

The EU’s formerly communist members have been introducing tighter controls on the eastern border since they joined the EU in 2004, with funding from their richer neighbours.

Meanwhile, the EU’s front line in the fight against illegal immigration remains to the south where thousands of poor Africans make the hazardous sea journey to the coasts of Spain, Italy, Malta and Greece, while would-be migrants from the Middle East and Asia take the overland route through Turkey and the Balkans.

Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer dismissed concerns the expansion would aid criminals or illegal immigrants as he symbolically joined Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico to saw through a barrier on the countries’ border.

“Schengen is not crime, not insecurity, not fear,” Mr Gusenbauer said. “Schengen stands for freedom, security and stability.”

The Schengen agreement is named after the village in Luxembourg where it was signed in 1985 by France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands to allow citizens to travel freely between them.

Since then, they have been joined by Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Finland, as well as non-EU nations Norway and Iceland.

Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Malta joined the EU in 2004, but have had to wait before gaining access to the frontier-free zone pending reforms to bring standards of their police and border guards in line with EU norms.

“The chapter of the division of Europe is now closed,” German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said as traffic moved across the border from Poland to Germany.