Borders come down for EU's eastern European members

LATVIA: Flares and cheers greeted the start of the expansion of the European Union's border-free zone to nine mostly eastern European countries on Friday, though some worry about a rise in crime or illegal immigration. The expansion of the EU's so-called Schengen zone, where people can travel without showing passports, saw border barriers go down first in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia at midnight.

Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Malta were to follow an hour later in what many see as the final lifting of the Iron Curtain. "It feels good, we have always felt that this was more like one town," said Iluta Melke, an office worker in this small Latvian town, formerly split by a border post running across the street from its sister Valga in Estonia.

After a countdown to midnight by a recording of a giant gong, border guards fired off a red and green flare before lifting the border boom to allow hundreds of people to walk freely through. Further south, a ribbon was to be symbolically cut at a border crossing between Lithuania and Latvia. The move is expected to boost business and tourism, allowing people to travel 4,000 km from Estonia to Portugal without showing a passport. Some in western Europe fear increased crime or that the EU's new external borders with countries like Ukraine, Belarus and Russia will be less secure against illegal immigration.

In Austria, the village of Deutschkreutz, close to the Hungarian border, has hired a private security firm to patrol its streets. Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer acknowledged worries existed, but dismissed them. "What is Schengen? It is not criminality, it is not uncertainty, it is not fear, it is a big space of security and stability," he said after symbolically sawing through a border pole with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico on Thursday.

Outside the EU, some in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia fear a "fortress Europe" where travel will be more difficult, though European officials say this will not be the case. "For bona fide travellers, travels ... will be faster and easier," the EU Commission said in a statement, noting people will only need one Schengen visa not separate national visas.

The expansion of the Schengen zone, named after a Luxembourg village where a first agreement on passport-free travel was struck in 1985, will mean it covers 24 countries. It will include an area about a third the size of the United States and be home to 400 million people. It first covers land and sea borders and will be extended to airports next March. Though some border towns were planning celebrations, the enlargement of the European Union in 2004 has meant travel across borders has already become much simpler.

Thousands of people from countries like Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have emigrated to work in Britain and Ireland, which opened their markets to workers from the new EU countries, even though Britain and Ireland have remained outside Schengen. Cyprus, which also joined the EU in 2004, has asked for a year's delay to open its borders. Romania and Bulgaria, which joined the EU this year, have yet to meet security criteria.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Borders_come_down_for_EUs_eastern_European_members/articleshow/2639326.cms