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Comment by smatija | Hacker News Reader

Slovenia already announced that they will replace border checks with checks close to border [1]. Schengen sadly doesn't mean much anymore.

[1] - https://www.rtvslo.si/slovenija/kaj-bo-z-mejnimi-prehodi-po-...

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I was just happy they removed that f...ing barbed wire on border of CRO/SLO Istria which was put up after 2015. Whom ever in Slovenian government decided to do that, is/was a f...ing idiot as they did it just to show how "hard" they are on immigration.

They split up the Free Territory of Trieste????

That's not true. They're merely stating existing law and policy, nothing to do with Croatia.

Checks close to the border is how the rest of Schengen EU handles their borders as well.

In practice, you'll just be driving across the border without stopping just like you do when driving from Austria to Slovenia, Germany to Austria or any other border.

Don't spread FUD.

I'm sorry but this is simply not true. In central EU, you can travel anywhere without any check. And this is huge compared to 20 years ago

Looks like you didn't have to wait at Karavanke tunnel between Slovenia and Austria yet. Selective checks by Austrian police are practically hourly and they cause traffic jams up to Jesenice (10-15km) on regular basic during vacation season.

Austria has been punished by EU court for those extra checks.

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/04/28/can-eu-countri...

On my first trip from Czech Republic to Germany in 2008 (as a foreign student from Eastern Europe) I was surprised there was German police checking passengers' IDs. I didn't have all the required documents with me because I thought there would be no checks at all because I had a Schengen visa. Fortunately the police officers were pretty cool and left me alone after I explained who I was and why I didn't have all the documents with me.

France was still doing internal border controls at airports "temporarily for 6 months due to exception circumstances" but renews them repeatedly so it's not really temporary.

A big waste of time when they do this in Toulouse on a flight from Brussels when you could drive to France faster without a border control.

Most of EU has legally done this, but actual application is more patchy:

https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/schengen-borders-...

There's still the occasional customs check inside schengen, for example the flixbus from Prague or Amsterdam to Berlin always seems to get controlled by the German police and a drug sniffing dog.

Do they mostly control for drugs? Or are there other types of controls? Like do they usually check for passports and ID?

At the moment, there are checks in quite a few places, we crossed over from Riga to Poland by bus a few days ago and they’ve checked the bus. But they were mostly interested in Russian passports and Visa. Similar from Germany to Denmark and Germany-Poland a few weeks earlier as well as Poland-Czech Republic-Austria.

I believe it’s mostly related to the war in Ukraine, since I had no similar experience in the more western parts of Europe (Austria/Germany, Germany/France)

They check for ID at the same time quite often. Just to look at briefly usually.

Random checks may still occur.

>without any checks

Not necessarily true, any country can legitimately or not (there are some regulations on this practice, often breached) force them, for mere political shows of force too, here's one recent such example.

https://www.euronews.com/travel/2022/11/17/france-italy-bord...

There is nothing about moving the border checks in the cited article so I'm not sure what this person is talking about.

"Na celotni meji dela 1400 policistov, večina jih bo premeščenih v enote za izravnalne ukrepe, ki bodo selektivne kontrole potnikov, blaga in vozil lahko izvajale v bližini meje in v notranjosti države."

Roughly translated: 1400 police officers work at border. Most of them will be moved to other units, which will perform selective checks of passengers, goods and vehicles close to border and in country interior.

So just normal police work.

Yes, spot checks on the road are how Schengen EU handles border control in general across the board. This means that Slovenia will be aligning the Croatian border checks with all others being done across EU.

Don't spread misinformation.

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