(Reuters) – Romania and Bulgaria scrapped land border controls to become full members of the European Union's Schengen free travel zone on Wednesday, joining an expanding bloc of countries whose citizens can travel without passport checks.
Fireworks lit up the sky at a crossing near the Bulgarian border town of Ruse just after midnight as the Bulgarian and Romanian interior ministers raised a symbolic barricade on the Friendship Bridge spanning the Danube River. The crossing is a major crossing point for international trade, and bottlenecks are common there.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev said: “This is a historic moment.” “From Greece in the south to Finland in the north and all the way to Portugal in the west – you can travel without borders.”
Inspections on air and sea travel from Bulgaria and Romania were lifted in March 2024, but land checks continued until Austria last month dropped a veto it had held on the grounds that more was needed to stop illegal migration.
Border checks between France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were first abolished in 1985. The Schengen Area now covers 25 of the 27 EU member states, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.
Ireland and Cyprus are not members of the Schengen Area.
