(Reuters) – Romania and Bulgaria lifted land border controls to become full members of the European Union’s Schengen area on Wednesday, joining an expanding bloc of countries whose residents 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 symbolically raised the fence at the Friendship Bridge over the Danube River. The crossing is a major transit point for international trade.
Checks 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 maintained on the grounds that more was needed to stop irregular 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, as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.
Ireland and Cyprus are not members of the Schengen area.
