Schengen space . . now 25

starcapitan · Post by **starcapitan** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 9:01 am

on 21st december 9 new states will join the Schengen space . They are now if I am right 13 (

) +

&

so 15 ,they joining ones are :

Cyprus will join 1 year later

Good 4 travels

I like Schengen when I go to Tende in

Dakkus · Post by **Dakkus** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 11:49 am

It's a shame I haven't been able find time for visiting Valga/Valka on the night of December the 21st..
In 1991 they had to build a wall through the city when Soviet Union collapsed and the city was suddenly in two different countries - Estonia and Latvia. Now, if you want to see your friends or family on the other part of the city, you need a passport for that. And if you are not Estonian or Latvian, you must use the special border crossing point designed for foreigners - which means that if you're trying to do the rail Baltica, you're gonna have a bit of a detour from the direct route between the two train stations in the city.

I would really like to feel what it feels when you first need a passport for something like that and then, after midnight, you can suddenly just walk over the border as if it never was there. I bet there will also be a celebration of some kind for that happening

I also wish that in maybe five years the official train connection between Estonia and Latvia will be resumed. As the train station of the Latvian part is in middle of the fields some four kilometers from the actual city, it would be very logical driving the Latvian trains all the way to the Estonian station, which is more in the city centre. After all, the train signalling system is still the same in both countries and also the railway equipment is still the same. If the two networks will begin using the same station, changing from an Estonian train (of class DR1, with soft benches bought from old Finnish trains) to a Latvian one (which is of class DR1, but probably with wooden benches) will probably be quite straightforward.

It's nice seeing this happening, Europe (re)unificating.

tabbs · Post by **tabbs** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 10:29 am

For me "Schengenland" is part of my everyday life. Which is great on one hand - the former border between DE and NL, for example (which had been fairly open anyway), is now a mere "state line" in many regards. Same thing for DE-FR or ES-PT, etc.

Again from a German/Dutch POV, especially places that used to be "cut" by borders, such as Kerkrade/Herzogenrath, are now closer together: Nieuwstraat/Neustraße used to be divided, with traffic going either way on either side. Now it's a regular street, with the N->S traffic on the Dutch side and the S->N traffic on the German one. And a former exterritorial Dutch national road in the Selfkant area now has regular connections to the German road network.

Living in country A while working in country B has become relatively easy. And shopping (especially if the neighboring Schengen country is also a euro country) and traveling in general. And and and ...

The "not so great" part? Well, people (myself included) tend to consider such things normal after some time. Whatever is bad about the EU will be repeated ad nauseam - may make sense in certain cases - but its positive aspects are taken for granted. The other "sour" aspect is that free travel within the enlarged Schengen area still does not mean people can choose freely where they want to work.

What I do not know is, how will being part of Schengenland affect places along, say, the Polish-Ukrainian or Slovenian-Croatian border? Those will now be EU external borders ...

Christian

Dakkus · Post by **Dakkus** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 11:22 am

Well, it never was a problem for us Finns that our capital's southern part used to be behind the Schengen border. First it was behind a border like any border (which has been the case between the borders you mentioned) and then it was behind the Schengen border. It didn't cause anything to change. I don't think the borders you mentioned have been so open anyway, that they would suddenly become tighter closed. I have seen that myself while coming from Lithuania to Poland by bus. The border control in Poland was just ridiculously slow and bureaucratic. Felt almost like the Russian border..

claudio vda · Post by **claudio vda** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 10:23 pm

In 1945, after World War II, the winners decided a new border between Italy and Jugoslavia and a town, Gorizia, was brutally separated from his countryside: the borderline was placed in the middle of a railway station square; this borderline becomes the iron curtain, you know the story.
The most ridiculous was that an ice cream shop was in front of the railway station: the shop was in Italy and the station in Jugoslavia!
A lot of discussions bored if Gorizia was an Italian or a Slovenian country: silly discussions, because as all the border towns, was a mixture; before World War II it had also a Jewish community, destroyed of course by the war.
Years passed, a new town is born in the Jugoslavian part: Nova Gorica (New Gorizia).
In the ‘90 the iron curtain fall down, but is the 1 January that the last border formalities will totally disappear :I was there when Slovenija entered in EU, in 2004 ; I will be there in the first days of 2008 for walk across “Piazza Transalpina”, the square about I spoke before.

PS: Slovenians trackers are very very very actives, let’s hope in some hit

helloggs · Post by **helloggs** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 1:29 pm

No, tabbs, the real downside of Schengen is that it is an exclusive club creating new obstacles for people not being in that club for some reason. People in Ukraine were, until now, entitled to receive a 90 day tourist visa for Poland (their neighbouring country) without much of a hassle. That's over now, the Polish consulate has to conduct an interview for each visa they issue. OK, many Ukrainians may have misused that visa and worked in Poland illegally or sold cheap stuff at the border, but there are also a lot of people with Polish roots living in western Ukraine (it has been Polish territory for a brief period between WWI&II) who can't visit their family in Poland anymore that easily. Besides, all this talk of making the outside border of Schengen space "secure" is pretty hypocritical, as everyone with sufficient supply of money (i.e. drug lords, human trafickers etc) is able to obtain the Schengen visa quite easily, for instance at a German consulate (in St. Petersburg, or in Moscow and Cairo - and of course we all remember the famous visa fraud case back in 2005 in Kiev) People that don't have enough money will have to risk their lives crossing the green border, just that this won't happen anymore between Germany and Poland but Poland and Ukraine.
On my trip this September I have crossed non-Schengen borders about 15 times, it was mostly done in a couple of minutes having the border guard glancing at my German passport (Personalausweis even

) In total I'd estimate that I spent more time waiting in front of Slovenian and Italian toll stations than at those borders. I wonder if this is all really worth it...

tabbs · Post by **tabbs** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 3:27 pm

helloggs wrote:the real downside of Schengen is that it is an exclusive club creating new obstacles for people not being in that club for some reason.

Any EU member state is welcome to join Schengenland, and there are similar agreements with a few other European countries. The Schengen acquis has never been about doing away with all borders and checks in Europe or the world. It basically is about traveling in the EU and moving the border checks from the internal borders (member state lines) to the external borders. And no, despite the checks and the SIS, that external border will of course not be 100 percent secure.

Now whether doing away with the internal borders is "worth it", well, that is a question that different people obviously answer differently. Americans who live and work in the Czech Republic with only a tourist visa http://www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/1197336726.73 were apparently "surprised" by the effect of CZ joining Schengenland ...

Christian

Dakkus · Post by **Dakkus** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 3:58 pm

Schengen area getting bigger is not that much of a problem. However, the general existence of the Schengen area is a bad thing. It has created a fortress called "Europe", which is next to impossible for a person from elsewhere to visit.

tabbs · Post by **tabbs** » Wed Dec 19, 2007 12:02 am

Dakkus wrote:However, the general existence of the Schengen area is a bad thing. It has created a fortress called "Europe", which is next to impossible for a person from elsewhere to visit.

Again, in my opinion and from my experience it is a good thing that we do not have checks at the internal borders any more. The drawback of course is that the single Schengen area members cannot (or only to a limited extent) have individual immigration/visa regulations any more. "Visiting" the EU from a non-EU country is certainly not impossible - what is true, however, is that getting into the Union has become more difficult for people other than tourists. But that applies to many countries these days, be it due to terrorism fears or labor market concerns ...

Christian

Dakkus · Post by **Dakkus** » Wed Dec 19, 2007 12:56 am

tabbs wrote:
Dakkus wrote:However, the general existence of the Schengen area is a bad thing. It has created a fortress called "Europe", which is next to impossible for a person from elsewhere to visit.
Again, in my opinion and from my experience it is a good thing that we do not have checks at the internal borders any more. The drawback of course is that the single Schengen area members cannot (or only to a limited extent) have individual immigration/visa regulations any more. "Visiting" the EU from a non-EU country is certainly not impossible - what is true, however, is that getting into the Union has become more difficult for people other than tourists. But that applies to many countries these days, be it due to terrorism fears or labor market concerns ...

Christian

The average of the difficulties in arriving to what is nowadays Fort Europe has risen dramatically since the inauguration of the Schengen area.
Of course it's nice that it's now easier going to Estonia or Sweden. But that's peanuts compared to the trouble it has caused.

tabbs · Post by **tabbs** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 1:37 am

Different perspectives methinks. "Schengenland" started (outside the EU) with five members - Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands. In that area it sure makes a lot of sense to have open internal borders, as crossing a member state line is something quite common here. Far away from being "peanuts". But maybe enlarging that area to countries where people can hardly profit from such open borders in everyday life was a step in the wrong direction.

As for your "fortress" and "Fort Europe", once again, I find it very difficult to blame only the Schengen legal framework for that. In the past couple of years it has become more difficult in many countries outside Schengenland to immigrate or get in temporarily for non-touristic reasons.

Christian

Dakkus · Post by **Dakkus** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 2:07 pm

tabbs wrote:Different perspectives methinks. "Schengenland" started (outside the EU) with five members - Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands. In that area it sure makes a lot of sense to have open internal borders, as crossing a member state line is something quite common here. Far away from being "peanuts". But maybe enlarging that area to countries where people can hardly profit from such open borders in everyday life was a step in the wrong direction.

As for your "fortress" and "Fort Europe", once again, I find it very difficult to blame only the Schengen legal framework for that. In the past couple of years it has become more difficult in many countries outside Schengenland to immigrate or get in temporarily for non-touristic reasons.

Christian

Of course the Schengen area has not done the stuff alone, it's the countries that have done it.
Just like guns don't kill people, people do. ..but I think the gun helps, doesn't it? (an Eddie Izzard quote)
And so also the Schengen area has dramatically helped the "you were born in a wrong place. You shall suffer since we.. err.. are better than you. Because of our origins and genes. Everyone's equal and we are even more equal than you are" attitude, albeit it is not the actual reason behind that happening.

Eliezer · Post by **Eliezer** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 5:49 pm

Dakkus wrote:I would really like to feel what it feels when you first need a passport for something like that and then, after midnight, you can suddenly just walk over the border as if it never was there.

I felt a bit of that when I fled the Finnish Mayday eve and travelled to Estonia on 30th April 2004 having my passport stamped and then travelled back to Finland from the new EU member state on 1st of May 2004 with only my personal ID card. So - according to my passport I never left Estonia.

But of course now the Schengen area gives far greater freedom.

Eliezer · Post by **Eliezer** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 5:59 pm

Dakkus wrote:Of course it's nice that it's now easier going to Estonia or Sweden. But that's peanuts compared to the trouble it has caused.

Actually going to Sweden from Finland was as easy before Schengen because of the many decades old Nordic passport free zone. When Denmark, Sweden and Finland joined Schengen the non-EU Nordic countries Norway and Iceland were forced to join Schengen just not to destroy that tradition. The Nordic passport free zone is far more free than Schengen - you don't need to have either passport or one specific kind of personal ID with you - any kind of legal personal identification (ie. driving licence) is enough for a Finn to go to Sweden. The whole EU will probably never be as easy to access... So - why Schengen? Why not extend the Nordic passport free zone to the whole EU instead?

ART · Post by **ART** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 10:55 pm

helloggs wrote: the real downside of Schengen is that it is an exclusive club creating new obstacles for people not being in that club for some reason.

And the eliminated obstacles don't count?

Schengen isn't a "club", it's an agreement between states part of defined entity, European Union, in order to eliminate the obstacles to the free internal circulation. Isn't a romantic benefaction organization for the general elimination of the frontiers between all peoples of the European continent or the world. Normal that the frontiers with Ucraina or Croatia are strictly controlled, like is normal that are strictly controlled those between, USA and Canada or Cina and Russia, for example.