Maybe. There's a reason a "flood" of Danes married to Americans live in Southern Sweden where the property prices are holding up.

Are you saying this is more about passport stamps than travel safety and security?

^^

In the present tense, that's true. But the U.K. government wants to introduce this at a bargain price said to be GBP 300 per person.

Most of these countries already have the workers at the airport for arrivals from non-Schengen countries. It would just be a matter of re-shuffling employees and non-Schengen zone passengers.

You mentioned Denmark. CPH had a little bit of a shortage of personnel at immigration not too long ago making the lines very long on more than one occassion. How would you suggest they re-shuffle employees (when they had a shortage) and how would you move non-Schengen zone passengers there any more so than already in place without adding costs?

I cannot conceive of any way to accomplish what you suggested without adding costs of some sort or another. Taxing the public even more is your suggested option?

As a student of politics, or 'political science' or whatever, you will know that you should consider ALL of the relevant available information before coming to conclusions.

For example, you mention 'the recent 'no' votes'. Why not also mention the recent 'yes' votes?

Do you know how many countries have ratified the proposal to date? Do you know what they were being asked to ratify? Do you even know how many EU members there are?

[Rhetorical questions - I don't need the answers as I do know them.]

And 'moving in the opposite direction' ? Opposite to Schengen ?

Has the constitution been ratified by any country after being voted upon in a referendum?

Too many passport stamps is a problem. You only have so much space for them. Then you've got to get a new passport or more pages added, each of which costs money and is a big hassle.

On a recent trip to HKG (which included trips to Macau and mainland China) my passport was stamped 10 different times by the Chinese government, and a full page was used up by my visa for China

Yes. Spain with 77% of the votes in favour.

So I had not been to Germany for a couple of years and in that time I had switched to a new passport (thanks 9/11 not!) anyways, the immigration officer at FRA looked through the ton of stamps in my passport and not spotting Germany asked if I had visited before. I suspect his display showed I did. I said I did, but he was wondering then why there were no German passport stamps. I told him that I usually come in through CDG and most of the time they don't...

He stopped me half way through my explaination stamped me and waved me through. I could tell from his body language what he was thinking of the French

Different cultures and free movement through the EU. Fun and Interesting Times

The French are "great" about not stamping.

SIS (II) which Germany and other European countries (especially Schengen ones) use seems to now increasingly query and try to match entry and exit; however, for a variety of reasons, it still has issues.

The idea is that security is provided on the borders of countries that are next to non-E.U nations... why have a border check between England and France or Austra and Germany if everyone had to come through security in the first place to get inside the E.U.

Regardless, I would think the economic stimulus afforded by the free movement of persons and goods outweighs the security concerns.

While I do miss the different currencies - they were fun, I do like the fact that I was able to drive from Amsterdam to Athens without having to stop at border checks in Belgium, France, Italy, and Greece...

Lol - Sometimes I get stamped at Schiphol (AMS) when entering the EU, other times I don't.

In some cases I have entered and exited the Schengen zone and visited a couple of nations without getting stamped via AMS. On my most recent visits, I have been getting stamped at Schiphol with the exception of one about three years ago where I came in via AMS (no stamp), but got an exit stamp at Madrid.

At FCO they seem to be good at stamping passports. My last FCO departure stamp was even put on top of an old AMS stamp. In general, I use Schiphol / AMS to enter the EU, unless I can get a reasonable non-stop.

I'm not sure how well they track entry / exits as I don't recall my passport ever being scanned at FCO outbound, as an example, but it's always scanned at AMS regardless of whether or not I get a stamp. Sometimes I make a point of getting a stamp upon return to the US to CYA as some airports like DTW do not stamp US passports unless you request it.

FWIW, I am glad DTW doesn't automatically stamp all US passports as it is my most often used European gateway and I only have room for 14 more stamps in my current passport (issued early 2003) and two blank pages which I will need for Visa's. Will be time to add pages soon...... and it's only 2005!

Hungary (Soon to be Schengen, IIRC) has never stammped my passport when flying in or out of BUD, but they do read it by machine at entry and departure.

Last but not least, on the subject of Swiss road taxes, I was able to enter, play dumb once with a friend and say "Geneva, Geneva" - that got us out of paying the - 40 CHF. We toured Geneva for the day then drove straight across Switzerland to Germany! Bloody taxes.... I hate the French toll roads, some of those tolls are very steep from what I recall.

SDF_Traveler

Well said - you are correct. They have it down in Europe. Not every pax is a security threat unless cleared by them. The Europeans do their homework and know how to profile possible problems and concentrate their efforts there. The US could lean a lot from them.

Unfortunately, I've not seen magexpect on FT in quite some time either.