Now it is oficial

Almost all borders in Europe will fall in December. 26 countries will allow the free circulation of european citizens from 21st of December on. Nine of the ten countries that joined the union in 2004 will finally join the Schengen zone of freee circulation of people. The decision was taken yesterday by the 27 ministers of Internal Affairs. Therefore, Estonia, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania and Malta will drop their controls in internal terrestrial and maritime borders. Ciprus decided to stay out for now, dues to it's situatuion of divided island. In what concerns to Bulgaria and Romenia, that only joined the Union in late January, the preparations are still a bit delay.
In the airports, where the abolishment of borders implies a separation between domestic flighs and those external to the Schengen zone, the free circulation of people will start only in March 2008.
Already in the Schengen Zone are Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain (since 1995), Italy and Austria (since 1997), Greece (since 2000) and Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden (since 2001).
Yesterday, the ministers concluded that the nine countries now joinning Schengen have a satisfactory level of preparation to apply in a good way both conditions necessary to be a Schengen country. The first condition is connected with the security level in the external borders (aerial, terrestrial and maritime), that will now be entrance gates in the Schengem zone. Therefore the new countries have to reinforce the control, data protection rules and the visa rules. The second condition has a technical caracter and it has to do with the obligatory conection of the new countries to the Schengen Information System (SIS), a gigant database of all relevant information for the security services. This was possible due to an informatic solution developped in Portugal, that allows to the new members to be connected in a temporary basis to SIS (which was thought to be impossible), untill the new system SIS II is ready to operate, in one year.