///HOLD UNTIL 2200 GMT///. Ceremonies were held just before midnight Tuesday to mark Bulgaria's and Romania's full membership in Europe's Schengen area, the culmination of years of negotiations by the Eastern European countries to join the ID check-free travel zone.
Identification checks at the land borders between Bulgaria and Romania and their neighboring European Union-member countries were officially ceased at midnight, providing travelers free access to the rest of the 27-member EU bloc. The two countries partially joined the Schengen area in March, but open travel was restricted to those arriving only by air or sea.
Late on Tuesday, the interior ministers of Bulgaria and Romania met at the Ruse-Giurgiu border crossing between the two countries to mark the opening of the frontier. Another short ceremony was held at a border crossing between Hungary and Romania with a meeting between Hungary's national chief of police and the chief inspector of Romania's border police.
The expansion of Schengen came after months of efforts to integrate Bulgaria and Romania into the zone by Hungary's government as it held the six-month rotating presidency of the EU. Some 1 million ethnic Hungarians live in the Transylvania region of Romania, a legacy of the partition of Hungary following World War I. Relations have been historically rocky between the two countries, but the opening of the border will ease travel and strengthen links between the regions.
The Schengen Area, one of the main achievements of the European project, was established in 1985 as an intergovernmental project between five EU countries — France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. It has gradually expanded to become the largest free travel area in the world.
