Schengen is a small village in Luxembourg, where politicians and officials of five member countries of the European Union signed a treaty in 1985. According to this, 27 European countries have abandoned controls at borders to their neighbors. There has been no control for those who have been going from Austria to Germany or Italy anymore, for many years. The so-called “SIS”, “Schengen Information System”, is a secure governmental database system used by several European countries for the purpose of maintaining and distributing information related to border security and law enforcement.

Until December 2007, “SIS” had been used by 15 member countries, among them Austria - as the most Eastern Schengen member in Central Europe.
Let´s get medias in res now. The border parts of Lower Austria, Styria and Burgenland had been representing the external border of Schengen Zone. Thus, Austria was in duty to protect its borders carefully, because those, who were supposed to cross the border illegally, had the chance to settle anywhere in Europe (at least within Schengen Zone). This is why forces of the Austrian army had been controlling the external border to the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia with night-time vision, infrared cameras, helicopters and patrol cars since 1995. And so they did in Burgenland, too.

December 20th, 2007, among five else, these four neighbour countries joined the “Schengen Agreement Application Convention”. At midnight, the borderless zone of the European Union shifted under 500 kilometres further to the east. Currently, the Schengen Zone guarantees a visa-free area for about 400 million Europeans in 24 countries. That enables travel between countries over 4000 kilometres from Estonia to Lisbon in Portugal without encountering any border controls.
Nobody believed that this could ever happen in Europe. Free borders! When I was travelling through France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany in 1990, I had to change currency eight times in eleven days! The train stopped at every border, because the passengers had to be controlled. What a shame for a free continent!

Today, even the border between Burgenland and the western parts of former communist Hungary is clear. You don´t have to stop anymore. Nobody would like to see your passport. Until 1989, the borders had been protected by Kalashnikov-armed Hungarian military and by the notorious Iron Curtain.

If Tessie Teklits could see that! The Pennsylvanians among you readers know that Tessie had not been allowed to travel to Hungary, into her home country, for a while.
December 2007, people in Western Hungary and Burgenland celebrated the end of the border. So 300 people from Bildein, Deutsch Schützen and Hungarian Pernau/Pornóapati joined in in Bildein that day. Of course, the border-line is still existing, as a topographic line. But we can travel free. We open our minds to our eastern neighbours again, we can visit them as often as we want to and vice versa. Hungary, Slovenia, Czech Republic and Slovakia have regained a place in the heart of Europe.

Mag. Walter Dujmovits, jun.