Romania and Bulgaria fully join Europe’s borderless Schengen zone

“Welcome to Schengen, Bulgaria and Romania!” the European Parliament posted X  Wednesday.

“As of today, there will be no more checks when travelling across land borders between Bulgaria or Romania and any Schengen member country,” it added.

Border checks for air and sea travel for the two former communist countries were lifted in March 2024.

Bulgaria's caretaker prime minister Dimitar Glavchev, who symbolically lifted the border barrier at the Kulata crossing between Bulgaria and Greece, said: "Today is a historic moment, the fruit of the efforts of many people. It is also a fact thanks to the border police, the military, Frontex staff and all our allies in the European Union. Together, we will all be much better able to protect the EU's external borders from Greece all the way to Finland."

According to a Reuters report, as they joined Schengen bloc on Wednesday enabling residents to travel without passport checks, fireworks lit the sky at a crossing close to the Bulgarian border town of Ruse just after the stroke of midnight as the Bulgarian and Romanian interior ministers symbolically raised a barrier on the Friendship Bridge straddling the Danube River.

The crossing is a major transit point for international trade, and bottlenecks are common, the report said.

While restrictions on travelling by air and sea from Bulgaria and Romania were lifted in March 2024, the land checks were in place till Austria last month agreed to drop a veto it had maintained fearing irregular migration.

The Schengen area now consists of 25 of the 27 EU member states. Ireland and Cyprus are not members of the Schengen zone.

Schengen is a group of 29 European countries that have abolished border controls at their common borders. This means that people can travel freely between these countries without having to go through passport control. The Schengen Area is named after the Schengen Agreement, which was signed in 1985 in Schengen, Luxembourg

The European Commission, reported CNN, has previously welcomed the expanded Schengen area, describing it as making “the EU stronger as a Union, internally and on the global stage.”

According to the European Commission, it enables the free movement of more than 425 million EU citizens, as well as non-EU nationals living in the bloc or visiting, according to the report.