Schengen delays ‘political’ says angry Czech Republic[fr][de] 

The Schengen area will not come into effect until two years after the initial 2007deadline for including the ten new member states. The Commission has blamed technical problems such as the installation of the SIS II control system, which links national passport and other databases. 

However, central and eastern EU members have said that they believe the real reasons for the postponement are grounded in the fact that many ‘old’ member states do not want to allow free access to travellers from the eastern EU. Czech ambassador to the EU Jan Kohout angrily dismissed the Commission’s arguments as “simply strange”. 

“Schengen is a political project. Technical problems are secondary,” Kohout added. “Many of the old EU members simply lack the goodwill to solve the problem, and the newcomers are receiving second-class treatment.” 

“We have a kind of fortress Europe, with a separate first floor for Schengen countries, and a citadel for the countries in monetary union.”