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Last March, we explained Europe's Schengen free travel area in plain English, then published a map of which European countries had temporarily reintroduced border controls. We now present an updated and improved version of the border control map, reflecting several changes from the past five months.
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Article by Evan Centanni
Changes to Schengen Border Controls Since March
As anyone who's visited Europe in recent decades knows, much of the continent is linked together as part of the "
Schengen Area", a collection of countries that don't make travelers show any ID to cross back and forth across their borders (though this system is overseen by the European Union, the
Schengen Area and the EU are not the same thing). But the system does allow countries to
temporarily reintroduce border controls under certain circumstances.
With last year's spike in numbers of refugees and other immigrants arriving in Europe, many Schengen countries have rushed to control the flow of people by using these special temporary border controls. When we published our previous
map of temporary Schengen border controls back in March, there were seven countries policing their borders with fellow Schengen members. Today there are only six, and there have been major changes to which borders are controlled:
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