Bulgaria and Romania rang in the new year with full entry to the European Union’s passport-free Schengen area, promising a fresh boost to their economies.

The lifting of controls at land borders, which the two Balkan nations have sought for almost two decades, will remove bottlenecks that often kept trucks loaded with goods stuck at the border for hours, if not days.

Thousands of Bulgarians and Romanians, who moved abroad for work since their countries joined the EU in 2007, regularly go through the same ordeal while visiting their families for Christmas. They can expect to get some relief during their return trip this year.

“Schengen entry is the best news for us, Romanians living abroad,” said 41-year-old Catalin Branzei, who works in Belgium. “We’ll save time to spend with the family, which is why we come here every year,” said Branzei, who added he and his family had to wait an hour and a half to cross the frontier before the holiday season.

The EU already allowed Bulgaria and Romania passport-free travel by air and sea last March. But countries have long argued that the removal of controls on land borders was key.

Without the border queues, Bulgaria’s entire population could save the equivalent of 242,000 days waiting at checkpoints, according to an analysis by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

The same study showed large economic benefits, estimating that the direct impact of full Schengen membership on Bulgaria, one of the EU’s poorest members, could amount to $866 million a year.

Key manufacturers, including from the automotive industry which accounts for about 15 per cent of Romania’s economy and 4 per cent of Bulgaria’s, are also breathing a sigh of relief.

“It’s the best news we could’ve got in a period marked by big uncertainties for the auto industry overall,” said Adrian Sandu, the head of Romania’s Auto Manufacturers Association. He estimated that staying out of Schengen cost the country’s auto industry €180,000 ($187,770) per day.

“It will help us save a lot of the logistics costs, impact the producers’ profitability and leave more money for investments,” Sandu from Romania’s Auto Manufacturers Association said. The country is home to French automaker Renault SA’s no-frills Dacia unit.

The long wait made many of the 19 million Romanians and six million Bulgarians say they felt like the EU’s second-class citizens.

So despite politicians’ jubilant statements, the mood in Romanian society isn’t “hooray!” but rather “finally!”, said Kamil Calus, an analyst on the country at the OSW think-tank in Warsaw. “There’s a sense that this is owed to Romania,” Calus said. That is not, he said, “a sentiment you can build strong pro-EU messaging on”.

Romanians are pointing out on social media that just as their country enters Schengen, the Schengen they dreamed of is slowly receding, said Calus.

That’s because of new restrictions already imposed elsewhere within the passport-free zone. For example, Germany, once a champion of open borders, has reintroduced controls at borders with its EU neighbours.

Meanwhile, growing anti-migrant sentiment boosts support for the far-right across the EU, and Romania and Bulgaria are no exception. Wrangling over migration led to the delays to Bulgaria and Romania’s full Schengen entry in the first place, with the two countries trying to assuage the concerns of Austria, the bloc’s holdout, over the issue.

Bulgaria’s border police chief Anton Zlatanov warned in a recent interview with news website Vesti that other Schengen countries are free to reintroduce border controls at any time.

In any case, customs police in both countries will continue to run random checks for the first six months of 2025.

And as the final decision to grant full Schengen access only came on December 12th, the authorities haven’t been able to swiftly prepare for the lifting of border controls.

For example, Bulgaria only started expanding the road leading to Kulata, its busiest checkpoint with Greece, shortly before the Christmas holidays. Millions of tourists from several countries cross through Kulata all year round.

Romania’s train timetable for 2025 was approved before the Schengen decision. That means trains are still expected to stop for 30 minutes on the border for document checks.

Still, there’s a slight benefit for night Travellers: during that stop, their rest will no longer be interrupted by border police officers knocking on the doors of their sleeper cabins. – Bloomberg