Travellers will be able to drive from Riga to Rome or from Prague to Porto without once showing their passports after EU ministers agreed today to extend the bloc's border-free zone to nine more EU states from December 21st.
The Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia will join the so-called Schengen zone which encompasses 15 states.
Schengen countries apply common external border controls, a common visa policy and share a police database on criminals and lost cars. Ireland and Britain have chosen not to join.
"It's a very key step for the people. They will really feel after the enlargement of Schengen that they are part of the EU because they can travel freely without controls at the borders, and that is one of the basic ideas of the EU," Slovenia's interior minister, Dragutin Mate said.
Ministers from the nine mainly ex-communist countries who became EU members in 2004 had complained their people were "second class citizens" as long as they were not part of Schengen.
They had to upgrade border and passport checks at borders with non-EU neighbours to get the green light from their EU partners.
While the move has raised immigration and security concerns in "old" EU states bordering the new entrants, German interior minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told reporters: "What happens at the end of the year is an opportunity for Germany and not a threat.
"It has a historic significance."
Checks will continue at airports for intra-Schengen flights until the end of March. Thirteen EU countries, plus Norway and Iceland, are currently part of the Schengen area.