Business Travel Celebrates 40 Years of the Schengen Agreement

This week marks the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Schengen Agreement, which led to the creation of the borderless Schengen Area, allowing citizens to travel across 29 European countries without any border controls.

For business travelers, the Schengen Area has been a major success story, cutting red tape for businesses and creating a free movement area that covers more than 450 million people.

The business travel sector celebrates its success and calls for the Schengen Area to be better enforced, through a wider digitalization of travel procedures and better protection of travelers’ rights, making travel even smoother and more secure. Additionally, it is essential to focus not only on borderless travel in principle but also on enabling seamless, fast, and reliable connections in practice.

With the recent start of a new legislative mandate, GBTA, eu travel tech, and the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER) submitted a joint letter today to the European Commission urging them to digitalize and modernize travel procedures, as well as better protect passenger rights to ensure businesses can thrive and remain competitive for decades to come.

Read the full letter: The Business Travel Sector Celebrates 40 Years of the Schengen Agreement

Published: June 2025