OPEN BORDERS RAISE CONCERNS IN W. EUROPE

BRUSSELS -- Nine new countries joined the passport-free Schengen
travel zone today, easing trade and travel but raising fears in some
quarters that crime syndicates and terrorists will find it easier to
reach Western European capitals.

The expansion creates a vast region of 1.4 million square miles and
400 million inhabitants in which residents can move freely from
country to country much as Americans move from state to state.

Membership will be an economic boon to the eight formerly communist
countries of Eastern Europe plus Malta, which will find it easier to
sell goods or seek jobs in the wealthier West.

But police and other officials worry that because many of the new
countries lie on important crime, human trafficking and illegalalien
routes, the Schengen expansion will make those activities harder to
curb.

"The easier we make it for people to get in, the more we will help to
promote human trafficking and drug trafficking," said Roger Helmer, a
British Conservative member of the European Parliament.

Large parts of the new outer border, which will stretch from the
Baltic Sea to the Adriatic, are unfenced. Hungary, one of the
countries that will be joining, estimates that it catches less than a
third of the people trying to enter its country illegally from
Ukraine, according to the London Telegraph.

"We all know that the eastern borders of the European Union ... are
extremely porous and very poorly policed, and all the reports we get
tell us that many thousands of people are just waiting there, queueing
up by the border to enter the EU," Mr. Helmer said.

"We've created a conveyor belt from former Soviet countries to
immigrate into Europe."

But supporters of the expansion say the potential problems are
outweighed by the benefits.

"There are worries in countries like Austria," which will no longer
form the outer border with Eastern Europe, "that opening up their
border will facilitate the work of criminal gangs," said Thomas Klau,
a senior analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations. "It's a
price you have to pay if you want to open up your borders, but some of
the fears are vastly overblown.

"Nobody will find that [is reason] enough to reintroduce border
controls between the countries. You won't find anybody saying in the
U.S. that they should reintroduce border controls between Virginia and
Maryland," he said.

Mr. Klau and other specialists point out that the new members have
been required to meet high security standards on the new outer
borders. The European Commission carried out 82 missions to make sure
that border security and the visa system in the new countries were up
to standards.

Schengen advocates also point out that most recent terrorist attacks
in Europe were carried out by persons who were already citizens in the
countries where the attacks occurred.

"The work of law-enforcement authorities will be more challenging, but
it doesn't mean that the level of security in the European Union will
decrease drastically," said Michal Parzyszek, a spokesman for Frontex,
the EU agency in charge of cooperation on border controls among
Schengen members.

Anyone seeking entry to the new Schengen countries will be checked
against the Schengen Information System (SIS) -- a European database
with extensive information on criminal suspects, stolen objects,
wanted and missing persons and 750,000 unwelcome foreigners.

But concerns about the system have been raised by the labor union of
the German Federal Police, which is in charge of border controls in
Germany.

"We think that the opening of the border is too dangerous because the
computer system to search illegal and criminal people is not as good
in Poland as it is in Germany," spokesman Horst Pavlik said. "It's not
the same standard."

An upgraded SIS II system, which will include biometric information,
doesn't appear to be applicable in practice. Mr. Pavlik said that the
borders should not be opened until the new system is in place.

[sidebar]

OPEN BORDERS

Nine countries join the Schengen zone today, enabling their citizens
to travel within the zone without passport checks. As of today, the
zone embraces 1.4 million square miles and 400 million citizens.

Current Schengen countries:

Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland,
Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.

New Schengen countries as of today: Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary,
Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Joining Schengen next year: Cyprus

Likely future members: Romania and Bulgaria

Sources: European Commission; Reuters news agency