<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by civicmon:
If this means anything, last time I was at LHR, they had a slew of Intra-european flights landing at once, and since most of the flights are international into that airport, they went through passport control. They allowed citizens from the EU, EEC, some other organization, and Swiss citizens to go through the line, all they had to do is show their picture page of the passport and they were waved through, nothing was formally checked.
This seems to be an "open border" of sorts, but they wanted to make sure that those who were supposed to be in the correct line (ie, the american like myself cheating through the EU line) were.</font>
Kind of. Because you have free movement within the EU/EEA (no visas required for anything, no time limits), the only check that needs to be done is an identity check. If your passport is from outside, stamps, visas, etc. do need to be checked. So it makes sense to have a separate section for these travellers. Not so much an open border, as free movement for certain people.
You've also got the 'blue channels' at customer - any citizen travelling within the EU (and this is strict EU this time, not EEA) doesn't have customs restrictions based on quantity. So, you have the right to go through a channel where the only search is for illegal items, rather than for taxation purposes. If you have luggage, the label is outlined with green stripes to show that you are allowed to use this channel. However, this falls down when, like me, you only ever travel with hand luggage, and so don't have luggage tags...
But even within Schengen, you still clear customs on arrival, based on the last country where you cleared customer, if at all. This means you can easily transfer from non-Schengen to Schengen with a passport control (and your luggage can be checked through).