on 21 Dec the borders of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Czech Republic and Malta will be open as it is in the other EU nations...this means no passport required or border stations.

I have mixed feelings...it will be a little easier to travel but i also liked the fact that undesireables (and by that I mean criminal types) couldnt enter Hunagry quite as easily.

Your thoughts....i know we have a lot of East Europeans here

it's the best thing that could happend to the east european countries

this is interesting because what you are saying about those countries is exactly what western europeans said about hungary when it joined....

are there no criminal types in hungary then? i'm not exactly sure that hungary is the number one destination for criminals either. they tend to go where the weather is good and there's a lot of money about.

due to this there's been the situation between spain and britain. over the years a lot of british criminal have moved there and there's nothing tha spanish can do about it. a lot of italian criminals have also moved to america, so i don't think it's just an eastern european thing. the media just likes to play it that way.

most crime happens within different communities as well. on the rare occasion it isn't, the tabloid press have a field day and whips up a 'send them back' campaign using the one example as though it applies to everybody. you don't see the press complaining about the working conditions of the same immigrants when they're working like slaves in farms, factories and other menial jobs for local criminals (see the experiences of a lot of polish students in italy, ukrainian girls all over europe, etc....).

a lot of german, british, and american sex tourists go to far eastern countries for sex with minors for example. these countries don't ban all western europeans and north americans because they understand it's criminal activity by a MINORITY. the same applies to eastern europe. crime is something that is in every community. it's just easier to blame someone else than look in the mirror to see the truth sometimes.....

this is also a bit of a risky thread really. are you fishing for comments about which predudices people have against people from different countries by any chance? it could all get nasty quite quickly.

i can hear people like iridium flexing their fingers getting ready to spew forth their uneducated misconceptions as to why so and so people (insert name of whoever is hate figure this month) are the source of every problem and need to be 'sent back'...

sorry for length, but coming from london originally, this is a topic that's been discussed there for years.

i will buy myself a lithuanian passport so there will be one badass more in european family.

They were also worried about these things when the Danish borders were opened too, but nothing bad happened. We didnt have border crontrol with sweden and norway for decades anyway though. And its not like border police is not existing anymore.

Btw, If anyone should be nervous, wouldnt it be more likely to be the western european countries more than the eastern european? Even though i love you all equaly, everyone knows which is the more wealthy and where people would want to go.

no...not trying see peoples prejudices or start soliciting peoples opinions about residents of other countries....i do agree there are criminal types everywhere, hungary included and especially the country of my birth...the u.s.

i lived in los angeles and houston in the u.s. and they are far more dangerous than anywhere i have been in the east (hungary, czech, poland, slovakia, slovenia, bosnia, croatia)

i like the fact that there is hardly any violent crime in hungary (not counting the idiots from the last two octobers)...day to day it is a relatively safe place to be...sure there are drugs and robbery, etc. just as anywhere else

i just think that one drawback to open borders in the east right now is that it will be easier for the criminal types to move in and out of the east...more police are needed but there are also economic issues tied to this

time will tell if it is a good thing or not...i am hoping for the best


thanks for your comments by the way

well i think yeah it would be a good thing really but yeah in some ways it can be a bad thing

First of all, there are alot of people who don't have passports and some who may lose there passports so if you went all the way to the boarder of your country then got told u couldn't go to another country sounds a bit daft.

Second of all, i donno about other country's but getting a passport in the uk is a real pain in the ass, all the aplication forms had to be perfect, as in both true and like not any lines out of any boxes and alot of brittish people send away one and it gets rejected because of many stupid reasons and they get another form in and that repeats about 6 times before they get it right. i wanted to go to france so i to get mine done but i was close to just saying no to france because of the stupid passports.

Third of all, There are a good few reasons why we should have closed borders, many of which is due to terrorism and drug smuggling and illegal imports of say cigarettes and beer or what ever and even people. theres alot of reasons why we should have closed borders, i would go for the closed borders thing but only if the passports were not such a pain in the ass to apply for but yeah theres loads of people who havn't got them or don't even want them.