Schengen Area

The Schengen Area is a zone of European countries, most of them EU members plus a few others like Switzerland and Norway, where people can cross borders without passport checks. It is named after the village in Luxembourg where the first agreement was signed in 1985.

It is separate from the eurozone: Switzerland is in Schengen but uses the franc, while Ireland uses the euro but is not in Schengen. Disputes over migration and temporary border checks occasionally become political flashpoints that feed into the euro's mood.