Schengen Agreement (1985): How Europe Abolished Border Checks

The Schengen Agreement, signed on 14 June 1985 by five Western European countries, set out to abolish routine checks at their shared borders. Agreed aboard a riverboat on the Moselle at the Luxembourg village of Schengen, it grew into the Schengen Area, a zone of 29 countries where hundreds of millions of people can travel without showing a passport. It is one of the most tangible achievements of European integration.

Background

The Treaty of Rome of 1957 promised the free movement of goods, services, capital and people within the European Economic Community. In practice, travellers and lorries still stopped at every frontier for passport and customs checks. By the early 1980s, long queues at border posts had become a symbol of how incomplete the common market remained.

Some neighbours had already gone further. The Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) had largely removed checks on movement between themselves, and the Nordic countries had operated a passport union since the 1950s. In 1984 lorry drivers staged protests and blockades over long waits at French and Italian frontiers, adding pressure for change.

On 13 July 1984 France and West Germany signed the Saarbrücken Agreement, promising to ease checks at their common border. The Benelux states soon joined the initiative. Because a full agreement among all ten European Community members seemed out of reach, the five countries decided to proceed on their own, outside the formal Community framework.

This choice mattered. Britain in particular argued that border checks were needed to control immigration from outside Europe and to fight terrorism and crime, and it was unwilling to give them up. By acting as an intergovernmental club, the Schengen states avoided a veto and could test whether open internal borders would work in practice before anyone else was asked to follow.

The signing at Schengen

The agreement was signed on 14 June 1985 aboard the passenger ship Princesse Marie-Astrid, moored on the Moselle at Schengen. Luxembourg held the rotating Benelux presidency, and the village sits close to the point where the borders of Luxembourg, France and Germany meet.

The signatories were mostly junior ministers and senior officials rather than heads of government: Catherine Lalumière for France, Waldemar Schreckenberger for West Germany, Robert Goebbels for Luxembourg, Paul de Keersmaeker for Belgium and Wim van Eekelen for the Netherlands. The low-key ceremony attracted little public attention at the time.

The text itself was short and largely a statement of intent. It promised immediate easing measures, such as visual checks of cars crossing at reduced speed, and a long-term goal of abolishing checks at common borders altogether. It also recognised that removing internal controls would require closer cooperation on visas, asylum, policing and the fight against crime and drug trafficking.

The 1990 Convention

Turning these intentions into practice took years of negotiation. The result was the Convention Implementing the Schengen Agreement, signed at Schengen on 19 June 1990. It was a far longer and more technical document.

The Convention laid down rules for the following areas:

• Abolishing checks at internal borders and strengthening checks at the shared external border.
• A common visa policy for short stays by non-European visitors.
• Rules on which country is responsible for handling an asylum application.
• Police cooperation, including limited rights of cross-border pursuit of suspects.
• The Schengen Information System (SIS), a shared database of wanted and missing persons, stolen vehicles and people refused entry.

Setting up the Schengen Information System proved difficult and delayed the start date several times. The Convention formally entered into force in September 1993, but it was only put into practice on 26 March 1995 between Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal. Germany by then was reunified, so the zone covered the former East Germany as well.

Growth of the Schengen Area

Membership expanded steadily. Italy signed in 1990, Spain and Portugal in 1991, Greece in 1992 and Austria in 1995. Denmark, Finland and Sweden joined in 1996, together with non-EU Norway and Iceland as associated countries, so that the Nordic Passport Union could be preserved.

The Treaty of Amsterdam, in force from 1 May 1999, incorporated the Schengen rules, known as the Schengen acquis, into European Union law. From then on, new EU members were expected to join the zone once they met its technical conditions. Ireland and the United Kingdom secured opt-outs, preferring to keep their own Common Travel Area.

The largest single enlargement came on 21 December 2007, when nine countries that had joined the EU in 2004 lifted land and sea border checks: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Their airports followed in March 2008. Switzerland joined in December 2008 and Liechtenstein in December 2011. Croatia entered on 1 January 2023, and Bulgaria and Romania joined in two steps, for air and sea travel in March 2024 and for land borders on 1 January 2025.

Crises and border controls

The Schengen system has always allowed members to reintroduce internal checks temporarily in an emergency. These rules were consolidated in the Schengen Borders Code of 2006. For years such controls were rare and brief, often limited to major sporting events or summits.

The European migrant crisis of 2015 put the system under severe strain. Germany, Austria, Sweden, Denmark and others reintroduced checks at some internal borders, and several kept them in place for years. The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 led to the most widespread closures of internal borders since the zone was created. Debates continue over how to balance free movement with security and the management of the external frontier.

Legacy

For ordinary Europeans, Schengen turned crossing a national frontier into something often unnoticed: a road sign, a change of language on shop fronts, perhaps a disused customs booth. The European Commission has estimated that around 3.5 million people cross an internal Schengen border every day, many of them commuters who live in one country and work in another.

The village of Schengen, with a population of only a few hundred, has become a symbol of European unity. A memorial and a European museum stand on the riverbank near the spot where the agreement was signed. The name is now known worldwide, not least through the “Schengen visa” issued to visitors from outside the zone.

Timeline

• 1984, 13 July: France and West Germany sign the Saarbrücken Agreement to ease border checks.
• 1985, 14 June: Belgium, France, West Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands sign the Schengen Agreement.
• 1990, 19 June: The Convention Implementing the Schengen Agreement is signed at Schengen.
• 1995, 26 March: Checks are lifted between seven countries as the Convention takes effect.
• 1999, 1 May: The Treaty of Amsterdam brings the Schengen rules into EU law.
• 2007, 21 December: Nine Central and Eastern European states join the zone by land and sea.
• 2015, September: Several states reintroduce internal checks during the migration crisis.
• 2025, 1 January: Land border checks with Bulgaria and Romania are lifted.

Why it matters

The Schengen Agreement showed that a small group of willing states could move ahead of the rest and later bring their project into the European Union. It made free movement of people, promised since the Treaty of Rome, a daily reality, and it went hand in hand with the single market launched by the Single European Act. Its later growth after the EU enlargement of 2004, and the strains of the European migrant crisis, show how central it remains to Europe’s political debates.