Schengen Purgatory or the Winding Road to Free Travel

This paper looks at the practical and legal implications of the Schengen “waiting room”. It examines the rules that apply to the verification of readiness in preparation of a Council decision on full accession and the extent to which the rules of the Schengen acquis apply to Schengen Candidate Countries prior to the lifting of internal border controls. It pays particular attention to the legal regime that applies at the borders between “old” and “new” Member States, more specifically Schengen members and Schengen Candidate Countries, and the borders between the Schengen Candidate Countries and third countries. It is argued that the prolonged exclusion from the Schengen area has resulted in a de facto duplication of the EU’s external border, accompanied with an incremental, near full application of the Schengen acquis, short of lifting internal border controls. As a result, for already well over fifteen years, Romania and Bulgaria have been part of the accompanying measures that should allow for free travel, yet its nationals have not been able to enjoy the benefits of their EU citizenship in full.