The entry became official at midnight on New Year's Eve and was celebrated with ceremonies at various border crossings. It is expected to mean a minor revolution for, among others, truck drivers – with the now abolished border controls, Romanian convoys have been able to wait 8-16 hours at the border to Hungary and 20-30 hours at the Bulgarian border.
Romania and Bulgaria have fulfilled the technical requirements for membership since 2011, but were stopped from entering due to resistance from mainly the Netherlands and Austria, who considered the countries' external border controls to be inadequate.
For air and sea travel, the two countries were already admitted to Schengen in the spring. But it didn't affect as much, since only small proportions of their contact with the rest of the EU go through those routes.
