Romania and Bulgaria to have full Schengen borders from March 2025

[LNW-GW Joint]

It appears Romania and Bulgaria will become full Schengen members from 1 January 2025, lifting border controls between them and with Hungary and Greece.
They were partially admitted to Schengen in April 2024, but only at air and sea borders.
It remains to be seen if there is any speed up at rail crossings, or reinstatement of services (eg between Bulgaria and Greece).

Moment of relief as Romania and Bulgaria join EU border-free zone

Seventeen years after joining the EU, the two countries are given the green light to join the Schengen zone.

www.bbc.co.uk

The decision by fellow EU member states means that from 1 January 2025, it will be possible to drive all the way to France, Spain or Norway without a passport.
It's a moment of huge relief for the 25 million people who live in Romania and Bulgaria, and who will finally feel accepted as full members of the EU.
Although border checks were lifted on travel by air and sea for the two countries last March, it was only last month that Austria lifted its resistance to ending border checks by land.

Passport controls on through trains currently take 90 minutes or so between Hungary and Romania (sometimes with a loco exchange on the Hungarian side).
Both countries take your passports into an office and hand them back after half an hour or so.
But I've seen EU reports which say that the main reason for delay at rail borders was because of railway bureaucracy, not the state border controls.

 

[rg177]

On the services between Curtici <-> Lőkőshaza (usually Budapest to Arad and beyond) passports aren't done in an office anyway - they're done on the train and passenger loadings typically mean a check is about 10 mins if that.

The massive (typically 60-65 min) wait once you're into Hungary is a mix of loco change, domestic stock being attached/detached then just generally waiting for Godot for a good half hour at least. Border control takes, again, about 10 mins.

So eliminating this will really make little difference. Even at the Dobova crossing after Croatia joined Schengen, we still lost time on a (as was) Zagreb-Wien EuroCity on top of the 20+ min dwell which was still left in the timetable, without any border checks.

 

[JB_B]

...Both countries take your passports into an office and hand them back after half an hour or so.
....

On my trip last year only the Bulgarian border checks were done this way, on the Romanian side all checks were on the train.

Hopefully things could be speeded up now but that's down to the operators.

 

[Doppelganger]

Sloppy writing from the BBC since they imply you don't need a travel document to travel from Norway to Bulgaria/Romania.

Everyone in the EU knows you need that document, be it a passport or ID card, but there won't be passport checks when travelling across the national borders!

 

[nwales58]

To see what takes around 30 mins, as well as the wheel tapping etc, on a MAV set eastbound watch comparment 1 in first at Curtici where a hungarian and a romanian go through a ring binder of forms signing off the handover apparently. Comes to something when hungarians don’t trust you to give their coaches back intact.

Westbound, as well as MAV counting the lightbulbs the track layout at Lököshaza is not designed for the shunting to sttwch the domestic 3rd class portion. Remember this is a recently constructed TEN-T funded 4 platform station (plus 4-6? freight loops), looks like someone’s wet dream for handling 10 paths an hour each way. The loco vanishes about 1km out of sight, eventually reappears to pick up the domestic portion. Hauls it a km up the track then propels back to attach. Took about 15 mins. So new track layout not designed for a movement taking place every 2 hours.

Schengen a trivial barrier compared to MAV/CFR operations.

CFR/BDZ at Ruse is not exactly slick either. It’s faster when it’s not a through train.