European Diary: The queues of lorries waiting to cross borders in central Europe were once a symbol of a Europe divided between communist and capitalist ideologies.
Travelling across the Iron Curtain was fraught with delays, searches and questions from border guards. But 17 years after the Berlin Wall came down and two years after the eight states in central Europe joined the EU, the border posts and passport controls remain in place, much to the chagrin of citizens and politicians in the region.
"We do not think that the new EU members should be treated in a different way from the old members," said Polish prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski last week when the issue of removing border posts was debated by EU interior ministers. "Polish citizens should be treated like all others, that is, they should be able to move around freely in Europe with no limitations and without documents that were so far required."
Political leaders from Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary are complaining bitterly about a delay to their entry into Schengen, the 1985 agreement that enables citizens from 13 EU states (not Ireland or Britain, which opted out of the system) to cross borders without showing a passport. Schengen, which also created a common entry visa for non-EU citizens wishing to travel within the 13 EU states plus Iceland and Norway, removes the frustration of waiting at EU airports and borders.
On EU accession in May 2004 the 10 countries that joined the union were promised they could enter Schengen in October 2007. But last week, after months of procrastination, justice commissioner Franco Frattini confirmed that problems with a new computer database being built to manage the EU's external borders would most likely delay their entry to the free travel zone until 2008/2009.
He blamed the delay on purely technical reasons, citing the huge complexity involved in building the system and legal problems with contractors. But his explanation didn't wash with the new member states.
"There is equality in the EU, but sometimes some countries are more equal than others," said Slovakia's prime minister, Robert Fico.
Schengen adds to a growing list of complaints by new members over what they see as their second-class treatment in the EU. These include restrictions on the right to work in some old EU states, the requirement to apply for visas to go to the US (all old EU states except Greece are in the US visa waiver programme) and Lithuania's failed bid to adopt the euro in 2007, which was shot down by the commission and council.
But the depth of feeling over the delay to Schengen has surprised many in Brussels.
The Czech ambassador to the EU, Jan Kohout, this month launched a bitter attack on the European Commission and old member states for failing to tackle the problem.
"The commission has been misleading us for a number of years," said Kohout, who told the media the delay to the proposed Schengen II system reflected "political views in some member states". Growing public fear over migration is the real reason behind the slow roll-out of the computer system, he said, while hinting that the Czech Republic could retaliate by obstructing other EU initiatives, perhaps even the revival of the EU constitution sometime next year.
"The border issue is a key psychological issue for Czechs," says Jiri Pehe, political analyst and director of New York University in Prague. "You have to remember the Czech Republic was completely surrounded by barbed wire for so many years that there is a high level of symbolism attached to this issue of borders . . . for many people EU membership is primarily about the free movement of people." The question of whether the delay to the Schengen II computer is due to purely technical difficulties is difficult to ascertain.
The commission's own internal auditors recently found there were "weaknesses" in the way it monitored the activities of the main contractor. The report also highlights French delays in preparing the site in Strasbourg where the database will be housed, and a stand-off between the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament on agreeing a legal basis for the database.
But a question also hangs over the readiness of some new EU states to link into the complicated border management system under construction. European interior ministers will meet in December to debate whether the new members of the EU club can be allowed into Schengen before the new system is complete. Until then a political divide between old and new Europe will remain.