In what was hailed as a historic moment for the EU, a deal struck in Brussels this week will see Maltese being able to travel across the European Union, with the exception of the UK and Ireland, without their passports as from 2008.

In a EU home affairs ministers meeting in Brussels it was agreed that Malta and the rest of the new EU10, with the exception of Cyprus which failed to meet the requirements, will be able to enter the so-called Schengen zone on 31 December 2007 provided they meet security and technical criteria by that date.

The Schengen zone, where internal borders and routine passport checks have been abolished, currently includes 13 EU member States; the UK and Ireland, and the non-EU countries Norway and Iceland, do not form part of the zone.

Following this week’s agreement, Maltese can leave their passports at home when visiting any of the 25 countries to be included in the zone.

The plan envisages a staggered phasing out of border controls with land border checks being removed on 31 December 2007, and the remaining airport and seaport checks being phased out by March 2008. As Malta has no land borders, it is expected that the March 2008 date for air and seaports will be applicable to Malta.

Malta and its new fellow EU members will by that time have to meet rigorous Customs and security standards and a final evaluation of the measures in place is to begin in mid-2007.

The Schengen system shares intelligence about external threats and tracks suspected criminals such as smugglers, felons and terrorists. Inspections will take place at airports “to be able to assess the watertightness of the separation between flights from inside and outside the borderless areas of Europe,” EU ministers said in a statement released this week.

The deal struck will see Malta being temporarily allowed to link itself to the Schengen database system, which will be adapted to include the new members when an updated version of the system is launched in June 2008. The new version, in addition to including the new members, will provide upgraded intelligence systems handling police and other data, such as biometric information.

Concerns raised by the UK and Ireland over the cost of adding the nine EU States to the database had threatened to compromise negotiations, which have been ongoing for over a year. The concerns were, however, quelled after the new entrants agreed to foot Ireland’s and the UK’s share of the bill linked to adapting the computer-data sharing system running the borderless travel zone.

Although the two countries do not form part of the Schengen zone, they still pay their share in the running the system, which costs some e30 million a year; the addition of the new States would add some e7 million to the bill.