euro|topics - Extending the Schengen area

Main focus of Thursday, December 20, 2007

Extending the Schengen area

This Friday, border controls will be dropped for the new EU countries that have signed on to the Schengen Agreement. While most eastern Europeans are happy about the new freedom of movement, some Western European countries are filled with misgivings.

Der Tagesspiegel - Germany

"Primarily in Germany, but in Scandinavia too, police and residents on the border are worried. They fear an increase of cross-border criminality and a decline in security," reports Gerd Appenzeller. But he thinks the fear is unjustified. "It may be an understandable fear, but it also a bit absurd, like that among Western Europeans when the borders between France, Germany and the Benelux states – to name a few – were abolished on 26 March 1995. There, too, the federal police were removed, and new methods for cross-border investigations were introduced. Security did not worsen as a result, but rather improved. Today, too, no one can say that the federal police will disappear overnight in the areas where Germany meets Poland and the Czech Republic." (20/12/2007)

Le Figaro - France

Christine Fauvet-Mycia is far from enthusiastic about the new Schengen zone. "The fact is that the enlargement of the Schengen zone we are being thrown back into the debate that stirred up the French citizens and Europeans at large when the European Constitution Treaty was submitted to their judgement. It ended up in 2005 with a 'No' vote in France and the Netherlands. A 'no' to an ever-growing Europe that is endlessly stretching its boundaries, spreading without settling and affirming itself, without re-centering itself around what unites it and what it is based on... The EU is diluting itself more than it is reinforcing itself while the 'cordon sanitaire ' around the Schengen zone is thinning as it stretches." (20/12/2007)

Lidové noviny - Czech Republic

It's not only Germans in some border zones who have reservations about the disappearing boundary with the Czech Republic. Czechs feel the same way, writes Martina Kopecká with an eye to the village of Krompach: "On the German side, the street leading to the border has been renovated, so as to get closer to their neighbours. But on the Czech side, the local authorities claim they don't have the money to fix up their part of the street. But more than anything, they worry about German cars in their town. So there is a large boulder blocking the way, and the local leaders have installed a "no transit" sign... Some local residents are annoyed, but people who have their weekend homes here want to keep the town quiet. Now, a referendum renders its decision: The road between the two countries is to remain a pedestrian zone." (20/12/2007)

Sme - Slovakia

The entry of the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the Schengen area makes the border between the two countries, set up 15 years ago upon the division of Czechoslovakia, superfluous," says Michal Piško. "Those in the border regions are happiest about this, because they have relatives and property on the 'other side.' As Mayor Josef Tkaldec of the Czech village of Horní Lideč put it, 'At the time of separation, we didn't think that the border issue would be solved so elegantly a few years later.' The new situation means more in emotional than practical terms, because in fact the people could already cross the border unofficially." (20/12/2007)

Der Standard - Austria

Most Austrians worry about the extension of the Schengen area. Wolfgang Weisgram laments the fact that the tabloid papers "Kronen Zeitung" and "Österreich" in particular are stoking fear among the people in cities. This is nothing but "staged heckling by the media aimed at Social Democrats who have become disoriented. But take one look at the towns near the border, and you'll see that not all in the party have lost their orientation. Take Schattendorf, for example - not only a historically Social Democratic community, but also one that is currently important. It's been preparing for years for the opening of the border, seriously and with no regard for 'Krone's' sensitivity. And most border communities are doing that. Because they know: That's their future. But only the local Hungarian media really see it." (20/12/2007)

Dnevnik - Slovenia

Journalist Ervin Hladnik Milharcic recalls the "iron curtain" that once existed between Italy and former Yugoslavia: "The fence separated two worlds. In one world, you could only choose between the Beatles and Rolling Stones, which you could buy in the Nova Gorica department store – and presumably it was like that up to Vladivostok. But in the other world, you had stacks of Lou Reed, Velvet Underground, the Grateful Dead and the Doors... The border that no longer exists at the railway station of Nova Gorica was a division between cultures. The signboard that stood there for a few years, saying the border is only temporary, was one of those things that made your heart beat faster when you saw it." (20/12/2007)

La Repubblica - Italy

Predrag Matvejevic, bosniac writer and professor of Slavic literature at Rome's Spienza University, ponders the opening-up of the Schengen zone. "So many people who only yesterday were still living within the closed borders of former eastern Europe today have to become the attentive guardians of adjacent land ... . It is not for example difficult to imagine a Pole or a Czech preventing a Russian or a Ukrainian from crossing his territory. But how will a Slovenian behave when twenty kilometres away from Zagreb he will have to stop a Croatian or a Bosnian with whom he shared a common fate so very recently." (19/12/2007)

» To the complete press review of Thursday, December 20, 2007

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