Układ z Schengen jako zwieńczenie idei swobodnego przemieszczania się w prawie Unii Europejskiej

The author outlines the development of the United Europe concept and free movement idea as ideas evolving in the course of decades and which were realised in Europe in the last and present centuries. The free movement idea is shown as a crowning achievement of the Schengen Agreement, along with preceding legal international acts. The author underlines the connections between the transformations of Western political and economic order and gradual opening of the Commonwealth’s borders. She stresses that the practical effectiveness of the Schengen Agreement solutions decided on the fact that along with the Amsterdam Treaty coming into force (acquis), the Schengen Agreement was included into the European Union’s legal framework (acquis communautaire). Lifting the borders within the European Union (EU), in spite of the fact that its genesis is outside the EU law, became, after including the Schengen Agreement (acqius) into the EU legal framework, one of the fundamental principles constituting the EU, as well as a logical complement of a unified market and the expression of far-reaching trust that the signatories of the Agreement mutually placed.