Czechia–Slovakia border

The Velvet Divorce

Czechoslovakia was founded in October 1918 and survived the Second World War and four decades of communist rule. After it became a democracy again in 1989, Czechs and Slovaks began negotiating how to share power, and the election of June 1992 is commonly seen as the beginning of the end: Czechs voted for Václav Klaus’s centre-right Civic Democrats, Slovaks for Vladimír Mečiar, who wanted more sovereignty for Slovakia, and the federal parliament, which needed majorities from both halves to pass important laws, was blocked.^[2]

The country split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia at the start of 1993.^[2][3]

A line through villages

For most people life stayed much the same, but those near the new border faced passports, customs posts and rules on moving livestock. In Sidonie, in the White Carpathians, a man was told he could no longer graze his sheep and goats on pastures just beyond the Slovak customs post, and another had to leave a hunting club he had belonged to for thirty years.^[3]

Twelve houses of Sidonie, an otherwise Czech village, ended up on the Slovak side, their owners Czech citizens who wanted to live in Czechia. A stream crossed by several small bridges became the border. The contested land was exchanged in 1996 under the Židlochovice agreements.^[1]

“I guess that borders have to exist, but it would be better if we were all united in a single Europe.”^[3]

Open again

EU membership and the Schengen area removed most controls, leaving the border, as Radio Prague put it, little more than a line on the ground.^[3] Some problems lingered: in 2023 the local mayor said Slovakia still owned land on the Czech side, and people who had worked across the line struggled with pensions. Checks returned during the COVID-19 pandemic, and again when Czechia reinstated them over migrants crossing towards Germany.^[1]