Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 26, 1995                   TAG: 9503290034
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BRUSSELS, BELGIUM                                LENGTH: Medium

`BORDERLESS EUROPE' NOW A REALITY IN 7 EU COUNTRIES

Travelers will be able to keep their passports in their pockets when moving from any one of the seven - France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands - to another.

Greece, Italy and Austria are expected to join the seven in June.

But the move comes five years after it was originally scheduled, and on a much smaller scale: Several EU members are unready or unwilling to join borderless Europe.

Britain, ever the halfhearted EU member, has vowed to stay out, and because of its customs links with Dublin, is expected to keep Ireland effectively out as well.

The three other EU members, Denmark, Sweden and Finland, have yet to announce their intentions, but they are expected to abolish the controls, too.

The most visible impact today will be in the seven nations' airports.

Big airports have had to create separate facilities for new "internal" European flights.

Passengers flying from Hamburg to Paris, for example, will not have their passports checked, whereas those flying from London to Brussels will have to brave long lines for passport controls.

So will travelers crossing so-called external borders, such as those between Germany and its neighbors, Poland and the Czech Republic, where security is being beefed up.

``We would be really happy if light traffic would prevail in the first days while the new control systems are broken in,'' said Volker Amler, spokesman of the German Border Police in the eastern regions, on Deutschlandradio Berlin.

In 1985, five EU member states signed an agreement in the sleepy Luxembourg hamlet of Schengen to abolish all checks on goods and individuals by 1990, if possible.

The date came and went, as did three subsequent deadlines - all lost in quarrels over loss of sovereignty and practical problems to abolish checkpoints.

Opponents fear that the scrapping of traditional controls will create a haven for drug traffickers, terrorists and criminals - in spite of strengthened random controls inside the participating countries.

The European Council of Police Unions, representing 250,000 police officers, deplored a ``lack of preparation,'' with its secretary general, Roger Bouiller, saying, ``in certain ways, nothing is really done.''

To streamline cooperation, police services from the seven nations have set up the Schengen Information System, which links up police computers and has information on everything from wanted terrorists to stolen cars.