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ZITTAU, Germany, Dec 21, 2007 (AFP) - European leaders on Friday hailed the expansion of the Schengen passport-free travel zone to nine new countries as a landmark moment for the continent's integration. "This is an historic moment for which we have been waiting for a long time," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in Zittau, where the Polish, Czech and German frontiers meet.

Poles, Czechs and Germans sent blue balloons into a leaden early morning sky in the frontier town in eastern Germany after abolishing controls along 1,100 kilometres of shared borders.  Merkel and her Polish and Czech counterparts, Donald Tusk and Mirek Topolaneka, watched as a barrier was lifted at the border post, marking the entry of Poland and the Czech Republic into the free movement zone.

The Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia joined 15 nations in the Schengen Treaty. The huge expansion means that about 400 million Europeans can now travel from the Arctic Circle in Norway to Portugal without showing a passport. For the mainly eastern European countries that became new members it is a new step in their attempts to bury the last vestiges of the Iron Curtain that once divided the continent.

Lithuania's President Valdas Adamkus said "We are witnesses to how borders, that divided peoples and nations, are vanishing" at another ceremony with Poland's President Lech Kaczynski at the Budzisko Kalwaria frontier checkpoint between their nations.

 "This is a huge success for all of us...Schengen has become a reality," Kaczynski said. Ceremonies were held at old border points throughout the night as the new Schengen nations marked the change.

Along the Czech-German frontier and at Berg-Petrzalka on the border between Slovakia and Austria, newcomers celebrated with midnight displays of fire works in freezing temperatures. While they will immediately be able to travel across Europe by road, train and boat without showing passports, the nine new Schengen states will have to wait until March for controls to be lifted at airports.

The Schengen expansion has taken years of preparation and the European Union estimates that about one billion euros (1.4 billion dollars) has been spent on improving security on the zone's new outer frontiers. But security services in some of the old Schengen states, notably Germany and Austria, have warned that the lifting of border controls could trigger a
crime wave. Allowing free travel across Germany's borders with Poland and the Czech Republic is "an invitation to criminals," union chief Josef Scheuring said on Thursday. Many Austrians also fear higher crime, according to a poll released by ORF public television poll which said 75 percent of Austrians opposed the lifting of barriers.

In Warsaw, the head of the EU's border watchdog, Frontex, Ilkka Laitinen, warned that illegal immigration would be the price Europe paid for Schengen expansion. But politicians have downplayed these concerns, giving assurances that police cooperation has been strengthened to allow cross-border surveillance and pursuit of suspects over frontiers.

German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble accused his country's police union of having the wrong attitude. "In an open Europe, thinking only about one's own powers along the borders cannot spell success for the police," he said on Thursday at Swiecko on the German-Polish border, one of the most bitterly disputed frontiers in the history of Europe. A new centre for cooperation for border police and customs officials was opened here, allowing 60 staff from the two countries to work side by side. Schaeuble added: "The abolition of the border controls is of symbolic importance because we are turning the page on the division of Europe."

by Francis Curta