Dec 21, 2007, 17:00 GMT
With saws and speeches, fireworks and music, borders fell across Europe Thursday at midnight as the continent's passport-free zone expanded by nine countries.
A car drives past a policeman at the German-Czech border crossing in Philippsreut, Germany, 21 December 2007. Border controls were stopped Friday morning, after Poland and the Czech Republic had entered the Schengen zone at midnight. EPA/Armin Weigel
All along the Baltic coast, and deep along Germany and Austria's eastern borders with Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia, the physical barriers fell as thousands of Europeans watched in the chill night air.
The enlarged Schengen area, named after the town in Luxembourg where the free-movement scheme was first signed, now accommodates a total of 24 countries - all of them European Union countries except Iceland and Norway.
The free-movement area has been extended by 4,278 kilometres, allowing people to travel from the icy plains of Norway and Finland to the sun-drenched beaches of Portugal and Greece without once having to show their passports.
The three Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania went first, an hour ahead of six other European countries that are part of the new passport-free zone - the Czech Republic, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.
In the Estonian capital of Tallinn the prime ministers of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and EU Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security Franco Frattini attended the festivities.
'We believe our external borders are those of the EU, and that it is in the interest of all EU citizens to be able to move in the Union as we move in our countries - freely and without hindrance,' Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said in his speech.
'All of our countries, all of our peoples living together in peace, in freedom and democracy,' Barroso said. 'This is indeed a historic moment.'
Opening the borders does not jeopardize the level of security of European countries, Frattini told journalists at the press conference in Tallinn.
'We conducted more than 60 inspections on the ground. And the result is that all the nine member states were perfectly well- prepared to join Schengen,' he said.
Ilves and Latvian President Valdis Zatlers took part in a symbolic border-demolishing ceremony at both countries' joint frontier in Estonia's Valga and in Latvia's Valka.
'All obstacles are gone. The way is open. Starting in Lapland, this way will lead us without any stops through Valka and Valga to the southern point in Portugal,' Ilves said. 'All of it is our Europe.'
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek recalled Europe's divided past as they celebrated the opening of Germany's borders with its eastern neighbours Poland and the Czech Republic Friday.
'This is a particularly sweet moment,' Merkel said in the town of Zittau where the three countries meet.
At midnight, border officials lifted the booms at Zittau for the last time, waving through cars and pedestrians without the usual formalities.
Younger generations would see open European borders as normal, Merkel said. Older generations could only dream of this kind of freedom, she added.
Recalling her own youth in communist East Germany, Merkel, who is 54, said: 'For those of us who are a bit older, this is not simply a matter of course.'
Polish Premier Tusk, speaking at the same event, spoke of a 'triumph of freedom.'
'I remember when we chopped wires in 1989, when I first made it to Vienna's Mariahilfer Strasse and bought a deep fat fryer,' the Czech premier said, referring to the tearing down of the barbed-wired Iron Curtain after European communism fell in 1989.
'We have today finished a process, which began with cutting wires. We have become equal by entering the Schengen area,' said Topolanek.
Topolanek and his Polish counterpart Tusk together sawed through a symbolic red toll gate at the border.
Slovak Interior Minister Robert Kalinak was rubber-stamping passports himself during celebrations at the Slovak-Austrian Petrzalka/Berg crossing on the outskirts of the Slovak capital Bratislava, public broadcaster Czech Television reported.
At the Stary Hrozenkov border crossing, Czech Interior Minister Ivan Langer and his Slovak counterpart Robert Kalinak symbolically sawed off the toll gate dividing the two young states. The two Central European members of the European Union and NATO were one state for 74 years before Czechoslovakia split on January 1, 1993.
While the dominant mood was one of celebration - on the Estonian- Latvian border, for example, the European anthem, Beethoven's An Ode to Joy, blasted through the night - not all were in high spirits.
Austrians largely stayed away from the celebrations at the Mikulov/Drasenhofen border crossing on the Czech-Austrian border, CTK agency said.
A large majority of Austria's population is sceptical of abolition of border checks on eastern borders, fearing a massive influx of criminal gangs endangering their security.
But at the St Margarethen border crossing between Austria and Hungary, Austria's Interior Minister Guenther Platter stressed that with the fall of the borders, the division of the continent was over at last.
Hungary's access to the Schengen zone marked a 'big step towards European integration,' EU Commissioner Laszlo Kovacs was quoted as saying by the Austrian press agency.
Of course, the shift of the Schengen borders eastwards presented not only opportunities for Hungary, but also challenges, he added, reassuring Austrians that they would be as safe as they had been before.
In a nod to the events of 1989, when the Iron Curtain fell on the Austro-Hungarian border, the then-foreign ministers of Austria and Hungary, Alois Mock and Gyla Horn also participated in the ceremony.
In 1989 the two politicians were the first to physically cut the barbed wire separating East and West.
At midnight on the border between Austria and Slovenia politicians made a start by removing a toll post at the Spielfeld-Sentilj border station. Thousands of locals joined in the Schengen party, overcoming the freezing temperatures with plenty of mulled wine.
On Friday morning, the foreign ministers of both countries, Ursula Plassnik and Dimitrij Rupel removed the last visible signs of the border between Slovenia and the Austrian province Carinthia.
'Friends and not foes should live at the borders,' Rupel, quoting a passage from the Slovenian national anthem, said.
Carinthia's right-wing governor Joerg Haider, however, refused to participate in the celebrations. An outspoken critic of the Schengen enlargement, he stressed that the event was no cause for joy.
Concerns have also been raised among Germans that opening the borders could lead to an increase in smuggling and other cross-border crime.
Even as police units were being withdrawn from some border stations, Germany's GdP police union called on the government to let them stay there in the immediate period after the new rules come into effect at midnight.
'The end of border controls comes far too early,' said GdP spokesman Josef Scheuring. 'Germany is not yet ready for it.'
But European Parliament President Hans-Gert Poettering rejected these concerns.
The open borders were 'a symbol of unity and reconciliation,' he said, adding that the three-point border had once stood for a history characterized by war.
Germany shares a 464-kilometre border with Poland and one of 810 kilometres with the Czech Republic.
In Denmark the Danish People's Party that supports Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen's minority government expressed doubts Friday over the extension of the passport-free zone.
'We know that organized crime committed by eastern Europeans is a growing problem in Denmark and with the extension of the Schengen cooperation, many pickpockets, drug smugglers and human traffickers can enter the country without being checked,' the party's European affairs spokesman Morten Messerschmidt told broadcaster DR.
There was also little to celebrate on the newly-fortified external borders of the expanded borderless area.
Trucks formed a long queue through villages leading to the Vysne Nemecke/Uzhorod border crossing from Slovakia to Ukraine, TA3 news channel said.
Meanwhile the UN refugee agency UNHCR reported Friday that Poland has seen a huge influx of asylum seekers mainly from Chechnya and its neighbour Ingushetia in the Russian Federation since July.
The agency said it believed the country's accession to the Schengen passport-free zone was the reason why numbers had shot up from around 250 people a month during the first half of the year, to 335 in July and to 1,148 in November.
There had been just under 5,000 new applications for asylum, of which more than 70 per cent were lodged after June.
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