European leaders hail expansion of passport-free Schengen zone

0 Comments | AFP, December, 2007

TALLINN (AFP) — European leaders from both sides of the defunct Iron Curtain Friday marked the expansion of the Schengen passport-free travel zone to nine mostly ex-communist states, saying it was one more step to ending old divides.

"Today, along with the elimination of internal border controls, the citizens of nine European countries have lost their last reason to say,'I'm going to Europe' when leaving home to visit Paris, Rome or Lisbon," said Toomas Hendrik Ilves, president of Estonia, which was ruled by the Soviet Union for five decades after World War II.

"We are at home, our common European home," he said during a ceremony at the port of Tallinn.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the expansion of the passport-free zone was...