One of the big upcoming stories in EU-land is the planned expansion of the union’s passport-free zone by the year-end.

It’s a tough task for the nine (almost all ex-Communist) countries to meet the criteria to join the Schengen area. (There are no internal frontier controls between member states that sign up to Schengen). In Wednesday’s paper, we wrote about the progress of the countries vying to join. The confidential report that we saw shows that a lot of work is still needed - especially on improving visa issuance. But some countries, notably Poland, have made great strides.

There’s been lots of doom and gloom about whether this expansion would go ahead by the year-end, as planned. What this paper shows is that while there’s still work to do, some have made a lot of progress, not least Poland and Hungary.

As someone tracking this from Brussels said to me, the considerable improvements could be because of popular pressure. The right to move easily across borders is of huge practical and symbolic importance to many people in the ex-Communist member states. You wouldn’t want yours to be the only country whose Schengen membership was delayed, denying your citizens this right.

The final verdict is expected to come early next month, when EU interior ministers meet to decide whether the enlargement goes ahead on time.

October 14th, 2007 in Accession countries | Permalink