LEADALL: With saws and wire cutters, borders fall in Europe 00000401206301, available

Dec 21, 2007, 3:21 GMT

With saws and speeches, fireworks and music, borders fell across Europe Thursday at midnight as the continent's passport-free zone expanded by nine countries.

All along the Baltic coast, and deep along Germany and Austria's eastern borders with Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia, the physical barriers fell as thousands of Europeans watched in the chill night air.

The three Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania went first, an hour ahead of six other European countries that are part of the new passport-free zone - the Czech Republic, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.

The enlarged Schengen area, named after the town in Luxembourg where the free-movement scheme was first signed, now accommodates a total of 24 countries - all of them European Union countries except Iceland and Norway.

The free-movement area has been extended by 4,278 kilometres, allowing people to travel from the icy planes of Norway and Finland to the sun-drenched beaches of Portugal and Greece without once having to show their passports.

While the dominant mood was one of festive celebration - on the Estonian-Latvian border, for example, the European anthem, Beethoven's An Ode to Joy, blasted through the dark night - not all were in such high spirits.

Austrians largely stayed away from the celebrations at the Mikulov/Drasenhofen border crossing on the Czech-Austrian border, CTK agency said.

A large majority of Austria's population is sceptical of abolition of border checks on eastern borders, fearing a massive influx of criminal gangs endangering their security. Mindful of the population's sensibilities, Austria continues to keep up border security, deploying army and police forces for dragnet controls in the border region.

But at the St Margarethen border crossing between Austria and Hungary, Austria's Interior Minister Guenther Platter stressed that with the fall of the borders, the division of the continent was over at last.

Concerns have also been raised among Germans that opening the borders could lead to an increase in smuggling and other cross-border crime.

Even as police units were being withdrawn from some border stations, Germany's GdP police union called on the government to let them stay there in the immediate period after the new rules come into effect at midnight.

'The end of border controls comes far too early,' said GdP spokesman Josef Scheuring. 'Germany is not yet ready for it.'

Germany shares a 464-kilometre border with Poland and one of 810 kilometres with the Czech Republic.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was on Friday to join the leaders of Poland and the Czech Republic - Donald Tusk and Mirek Topolanek - in the town of Zwickau, close to where the borders of the three countries meet.

EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, are also due to attend.

Apart from freeing up travel between the more established EU members and the states that joined the Brussels-based bloc in May 2004, extending the Schengen rules is expected to underpin closer economic ties between old and new Europe.

At the Stary Hrozenkov border crossing, Czech Interior Minister Ivan Langer and his Slovak counterpart Robert Kalinak symbolically sawed off the toll gate dividing the two young states. The two Central European members of the European Union and NATO were one state for 74 years before Czechoslovakia split on January 1, 1993.

Hungary's access to the Schengen zone marked a 'big step towards European integration,' EU Commissioner Laszlo Kovacs was quoted as saying by the Austrian press agency.

Of course, the shift of the Schengen borders eastwards presented not only opportunities for Hungary, but also challenges, he added, reassuring Austrians that after midnight on Thursday, they would be as safe as they had been before.

In a nod to the events of 1989, when the Iron Curtain fell on the Austro-Hungarian border, the then-foreign ministers of Austria and Hungary, Alois Mock and Gyla Horn also participated in the ceremony.

In 1989 the two politicians were the first to physically cut the barbed wire separating East and West.