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The Schengen Air Space is getting wider

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Travel Articles >> Locations >> Europe Travel Articles >> Avia Travel

On Sunday the process of the expansion of the Schengen Agreement to the 24 states of Europe has been finished. The passengers, crossing the air space inside of this zone will not have to undergo passport checks anymore.

In the last year another nine countries of the Eastern and Central Europe became the participants of the Schengen Agreement - Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The citizens of these countries have obtained the right to the unlimited travel inside the whole space of the so-called Schengen Zone. But because of the technical difficulties, the new rules had to be applied gradually.

At first, on the 21-th of December 2007 the control at the land an sea borders between old and new members of the Schengen Zone has been removed. Concerning the air borders, their "opening" has been postponed till the 30-th of March. The new members of the agreement had to take their time to make their air passengers registration system to be conform to the central database of the Schengen Area.

In the airports of the European Union the passport control for the countries of the Schengen Zone has already been removed. These are not only the West-European countries, that recently made the backbone of the EU, but also nine countries that entered the European block in 2004 among the "ten" of the new states. These new members are now also connected to the central database of the countries of the Schengen Agreement. Among them are Baltic countries, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and Malta. But the list does not contain Cyprus that has also joined the EU in 2004.

That is the second most important step on the way to the maximal integration of the states of the united Europe. The first one was the cancellation of land borders between the countries of the Schengen Zone, that became active on the 21-th of December of the last year.

The agreement was signed a couple of months ago and at the same time canceled the control at the sea and land borders. But to do the same in the airports, the new members of the agreement had to get connected to the united Schengen Information System and this happened only now.

Now, for the citizens of the countries of the Schengen Zone there are special corridors, where only customs control is being still kept.

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Article Submitted On: March 31, 2008