EU to dismantle more border posts

IHT | Nov 6, 2007

By Stephen Castle

BRUSSELS: 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 are preparing to agree Thursday that eight ex-Communist nations plus Malta are ready to join Continental Europe’s Schengen system, which does away with internal passport controls.

From the Baltics to Budapest, lines at border points will be consigned to history on Dec. 21, 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, ex-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.

The European Commissioner for justice and home affairs, Franco Frattini and José Sócrates, the prime minister of Portugal, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, plan to jet between the four locations as the borders come down on Dec. 21.

But, with growing concerns over migration and organized crime in Europe, others 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 document expected to be agreed on Thursday argues that “it was established that the authorities managed to turn around the situation.”

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.” Airports at Brno, Vilnius, Riga, Ljubljana and Bratislava had to be revisited before being deemed satisfactory.

Currently, 13 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.

Originally the hope had been to admit the nine new nations last January. But 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 – clearing their path to Schengen membership this year.

“In Poland it is seen as the natural ending of a process of integration of the country into Europe,” said Eugeniusz Smolar, president of the Center for International Relations, a research institute in Warsaw. “It is one of the symbols of the lowering of barriers.”

The ending of border checks is expected to increase cross-border trade and bring economic benefits, Smolar said.

He conceded that there were complications for Warsaw, in particular the need to introduce a visa system for neighboring Belarus and Ukraine, something that has strained relations with those countries.

But Smolar rejected the idea that the East Europeans were any less well equipped to police Europe’s external border than their western counterparts. “When the commission gave the final go-ahead, that decision was based on the analysis of their officials. If they are happy, why question that judgment?” Smolar said.

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.

The worst concerns raised during previous Schengen enlargements, including the admission of Greece because of its massive coastline, have not been realized, he added.