Bulgaria and Romania Join the Schengen Area

On January 1, 2025, Bulgaria and Romania became full members of the Schengen area of free movement, after a thirteen-year-long wait. While controls have been lifted at airports and seaports since March 2024, these have now been removed at land borders too. The accession was finally made after Austria dropped its veto last December, which until then had opposed the entry of the two countries to the passport free area. Temporary controls will continue to operate at their land borders for the next six months, while the border between Bulgaria and Turkey is set to be reinforced.

Even as the Schengen Area has expanded, temporary controls have been reintroduced along several internal borders. For example, Germany currently has such controls along the border with each of its nine neighboring countries.

According to the European Commission, members of the Schengen agreement are allowed to temporarily introduce border controls at internal borders in the event of a serious threat to public policy or internal security and must be applied as a last resort measure or in exceptional situations, for a limited time period only. There are a number of issues cited for the need for the temporary border crossings currently in place, including security, migration control, public safety and, in the case of Denmark, Russian attempts of espionage. The introduction of border checks has sparked backlash from groups such as the student organization AEGEE, which says that reintroducing controls could foster suspicion between states and lead to discrimination, as certain groups could face heightened scrutiny based on nationality or ethnicity.

The Schengen area was created in 1995, after five states (France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg) signed the Schengen Agreement in 1985, followed by the Schengen Convention in 1990. The Schengen area is an area of free movement of people, which also guarantees its member states enhanced protection at external borders. The majority of EU Member States have gradually joined the Schengen area, which now includes 25 of the 27 EU Member States (Ireland and Cyprus are not currently members), as well as four non-EU Member States: Iceland (joined in 1999), Norway (1999), Switzerland (2008) and Liechtenstein (2011).