What is Schengen?

Schengen is a small European town situated in the Luxembourg territory near the French and German border. Schengen is remembered because it represents the so-called Schengen area. In this area no border checks are conducted at the common internal borders, which thus can be crossed anywhere at any time.

The Schengen agreement was signed on 14 June 1985. The initial agreement was signed by five Member States, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Their intention was to create a territory without borders and provide a common policy on temporary entry of persons and cross-border police co-operation.

Once the Treaty of Amsterdam was signed, the agreement itself and all decisions having been enacted on its basis had been implemented into the law of the European Union.

Schengen is formed by the common territory of 15 countries including: 13 countries which are Members of the European Union: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Austria, Greece, Spain and Sweden; and 2 non-EU countries: Iceland and Norway. These countries not only have signed the agreement but they also completed the process of implementing all that was mentioned in the contract. It took them some time to implement all the decisions that have been agreed upon. The first states that were part of this project actually managed to complete the system in 26 of March 1995.

Special areas
Some regions that are part of the member states of the Schengen agreement are not affected by the agreement such as: all overseas regions of France, Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Heligoland and Büsingen of Germany, Svalbard of Norway and Northern Cyprus. There are also some regions that get special treatment : the Mount Athos region, which is an important religious site and also autonomous region of Greece, has a special exemption from Schengen allowing women to be barred from entry ; Livigno of Italy is a “tax haven” ; Greenland and the Faroe Islands of Denmark.

Great Britain and Ireland are a part of the Schengen agreement but they have a limited participation and involvement in its affairs. These two countries limit themselves in taking part only in measures concerning police and criminal prosecution cooperation.

New members
The newly acceded EU member states (Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia) do not yet fully implement the Schengen acquis. These countries do not therefore, issue uniform Schengen visas (yet). Nor do the Schengen visas issued by the implementing countries entitle their holders to stay in/pass or transit through the new EU member states without a visa.
The newly acceded EU countries are not expected to become full member of the Schengen member states until the end of the year 2007.

14 June 1985 - Belgium, France, West Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands
3 October 1990 - (German reunification brings in the former East Germany)
27 November 1990 - Italy
25 June 1992 - Portugal, Spain
6 November 1992 - Greece NB : Greece incompletely implemented the agreement and requires a different visa for citizens of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia because of the name-conflict between the two countries.
28 April 1995 - Austria
19 December 1996 - Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden
29 May 2000 - Republic of Ireland, United Kingdom (both countries limited membership only)
1 May 2004 - Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia
16 October 2004 - Switzerland (ratified by referendum on 5 June 2005)
1 January 2007 - Bulgaria, Romania

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 6th, 2006 at 10:48 am and is filed under News and Info. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.