{"id":25009,"date":"2024-04-02T04:03:12","date_gmt":"2024-04-02T08:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/?p=25009"},"modified":"2024-04-02T05:38:52","modified_gmt":"2024-04-02T09:38:52","slug":"schengen-area-expands-to-almost-all-eu-countries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/schengen-area-expands-to-almost-all-eu-countries\/","title":{"rendered":"Schengen area expands to almost all EU countries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Effective March 31st, <strong>Romania<\/strong> and <strong>Bulgaria<\/strong> are now <a href=\"https:\/\/ec.europa.eu\/commission\/presscorner\/detail\/en\/ip_24_1722\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">part of the Schengen area.<\/a> This means that passengers and crew arriving in these countries are able to move freely within the EU (<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">by air and sea<\/span>) without any further immigration or border checks. &#8220;Schengen Flights&#8221; landing in Romania or Bulgaria are not required to clear customs.<\/p>\n<p>The first &#8220;Schengen flight&#8221; landed at 0020L on March 31 at LBSF\/Sofia, from Naples.<\/p>\n<p>The Schengen Area was established in 1985. Before Bulgaria and Romania\u2019s admission, it was comprised of 23 of the 27 EU member countries, along with Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. The only remaining Non-Schengen countries in the EU are <strong>Ireland <\/strong>(because Ireland has a common travel area with the UK, and the UK doesn&#8217;t like the Schengen idea very much), and <strong>Cyprus<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/schengen.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-25010 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/schengen-1024x724.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"724\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/schengen-1024x724.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/schengen-300x212.jpg 300w, https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/schengen-768x543.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/schengen-1536x1087.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/schengen-2048x1449.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Schengen<\/strong> <strong>countries<\/strong>: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Non-Schengen<\/strong> countries in Europe: Ireland, the UK, Albania, Belarus, Bosnia &amp; Herzegovina, Cyprus, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Non-Schengen <\/strong>countries in the EU: Ireland, Cyprus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Effective March 31st, Romania and Bulgaria are now part of the Schengen area. This means&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":25011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[332,945],"class_list":{"0":"post-25009","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-briefings","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-schengen"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25009"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25032,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25009\/revisions\/25032"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}