Poland and eight of the new EU members could join the bloc's borderless Schengen zone as early as next December, if they meet critical security and technical criteria, Warsaw Business Journal reported.

Land and sea-border controls on nine of the 10 new EU members will be dropped on December 31, 2007, and airport checks in March 2008, but only if those states manage to prove that their borders with non-EU states are secure, and that they are ready to work with the bloc's police database, EU Interior Ministers agreed last week.

"This decision means Europe will not stay divided in two categories of states, two categories of people," Czech Interior Minister Ivan Langer said after the meeting in Brussels.

However, some diplomats say it will be difficult for the countries to meet the security and technology requirements. Delays in establishing a new police database had originally caused the date for Schengen expansion to be pushed back from October next year to as late as the end of 2008 or early 2009. But the new states complained of being deprived of rights enjoyed by other members, and accused the older members of using the technical requirements as a pretext to keep them out of the zone at a time when immigration fears in Europe were looming large.

Thus, to speed up the process, the Interior Ministers agreed to set a target of allowing all but Cyprus to access the current database. EU officials have said that Cyprus would not be prepared to join the database and have its borders lifted at the same time as the nine other states.