The shady sides of borderless travel

Not everyone, it seems, is complying with the Schengen rules. Kenneth Jones reports.

While some are taking time to kick the habit of showing their passports to now empty checkpoints, Czechs and Slovaks have rapidly got used to their new Schengen status with only a few minor problems reported.

Despite proclaiming a flawless first week of operation now that it is surrounded by fellow Schengen members, the Czech ministry of interior admits that it is aware of at least one report of Austrian authorities opening a border crossing only to local traffic.

Local media have reported a handful of similar cases on the German frontier where long applied rules allowing only locals to cross the border are still being enforced in the face of Schengen’s free movement mantra.

"We expected the frontier to be open and then all of a sudden it was clear that on the German side only local vehicles were being allowed through," says Libor Picka, mayor of the Czech town of Bela Nad Radbuzou, around ten kilometres from the border with Bavaria. "We have taken up the issue with the interior ministry but as it’s holiday time we are still waiting for a reply, but the opinion is that Berlin is breaking the Schengen rules," he adds.

The ministry is checking the facts before deciding its next move, spokesman Vladimir Repka said.

The Slovak ministry of the interior says that it has not heard of any such problems although crossing points restricted to locals were also in use pre-Schengen as well.

The Czech and Slovak governments both attached symbolic significance to Schengen membership as a step towards ending their perceived second-class EU status.

While Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek and Interior Minister Ivan Langer, leaders of the Civic Democrat Party, known for its cold and detached view of the EU, threw themselves wholeheartedly into the Schengen celebrations, President Václav Klaus, famous for his even icier view of Brussels, was nowhere to be seen.

But Topolanek still has some scores to settle. He is intent on removing other obstacles, such as limits on Czechs working in neighbouring Austria and Germany, during his country’s EU presidency at the start of 2009. The government is toying with the idea of making barrier removal the main theme of its six months at the EU helm.

Despite the official gloss and hype over the ending of the last remnants of the Iron Curtain, Schengen has thrown up problems for Slovakia as the guardian of a vulnerable stretch of the zone’s eastern frontier. While the new hi-tech security frontier against immigrants coming through Ukraine is proudly shown off to visitors, Slovakia still has to tie up agreements attempting to assure Ukraine that it has not been left completely in the cold.

Opening the three-day Schengen celebrations at the Slovak-Austrian frontier, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico promised that tightened controls on the newly reinforced border with Ukraine would not hamper moves to improve relations with Kiev. But Bratislava is still negotiating a bilateral agreement allowing easier cross-border movement for those living along the border which, according to Foreign Minister Jan Kubis, could be ready within two months.

Meanwhile, Slovak tourist agencies are already complaining of a predictable fall in visitors from Ukraine and Russia to its mountain ski resorts, with citizens from both countries now faced with the more complicated and expensive process of obtaining Schengen visas. The local association of travel companies has already fired off a letter to the foreign ministry calling for action to ease visa allocation.

And non-EU foreigners, in Prague especially, are still trying to get their heads round the new Schengen rules which have done away with their favoured ploy of extending their three-month tourist visas by slipping across the border to Germany. They now face trips to Ukraine, Switzerland or non-Schengen Britain, plus the headache of only being allowed in ‘Schengenland’ for 90 days during any six-month period.

Expat websites are now crowded with questions and advice, with many just trying to work out how long their existing visas will be valid before they get out of the country and go home.

For the Slovak government, Schengen has been a welcome sideshow ahead of its much bigger target of overcoming the Maastricht barriers for entering the eurozone on 1 January 2009, for which the countdown has already begun.

• Kenneth Jones is a freelance journalist based in Prague.

Not everyone, it seems, is complying with the Schengen rules. Kenneth Jones reports.