Schengen Area

The countries listed on this page, on the roster this catalogue applies. Four of them are outside the European Union: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, each associated with the area by a separate agreement rather than by membership of the Union.

No. A protocol attached at the Treaty of Amsterdam, in force on 1 May 1999, lets Ireland take part in some Schengen provisions, chiefly police and judicial cooperation and the shared alert database, while staying outside the provisions that remove border checks. Ireland keeps the Common Travel Area with the United Kingdom instead, and its record shows accession to the European Union in 1973 and no Schengen membership.

A state that joins the European Union takes on the Schengen acquis with accession, but its internal checks stay in place. Under Regulation (EU) 2022/922 it is then evaluated by teams from the other members and the Commission on its external border management, its use of the Schengen Information System, its data protection, its visa issuing and its police cooperation, and the checks come off only on a unanimous decision of the Council. Non-members of the Union join by association agreement, as Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein did.

A stay of 90 days in any 180 is counted once across the whole area rather than country by country, so crossing an internal border does not restart the clock. The Entry/Exit System, whose phased start began on 12 October 2025 and which was in full use from 10 April 2026, keeps that count as a record of each external crossing instead of a stamp in a passport.

In two steps. Checks at air and sea borders came off on 31 March 2024, and the Council decided on 12 December 2024 to lift the checks at land borders from 1 January 2025. Both states had acceded to the European Union on 1 January 2007, which bound them to the acquis seventeen years before the internal checks were removed.

Yes, and members do. Articles 25 to 35 of the Schengen Borders Code allow control at an internal border to be reintroduced where there is a serious threat to public policy or internal security, on notification to the Commission and the other members. Regulation (EU) 2024/1717, in force from 10 July 2024, sets the limits: up to six months at a time to a total of two years for a foreseeable threat, extendable in exceptional circumstances by up to a further year, and up to one month prolongable to three for an unforeseeable one.