There are still loads of "invisible" borders to cross. You still need to get all sorts of permits from the heads of police, the foreigners police and other assorted bureaucrats.

This is often just a formality, but big brother would like to keep a tab on you, hence the required piece of paper. If you don't show up in their database you don't exist. This in turn might cause all sorts of problems elsewhere, as employers demand you have all these bits of paper before they are allowed to employ you.

What has been your experience?

Have you worked 'illegally' as a legal European in another EU country?
What did the government do when they found out?
Did they send you back across the non-existing border to your own EU country?
Or did nothing happen?

Add your comments below and let us know what happened to you!

  <sub>P.s. Did you know that female police officers in Paris are breaking the law by wearing their official uniform trousers?
  A certain police chief in the 1800's decided that women were not allowed to dress like a man and introduced a law to this extent. The rule stipulated that any Parisienne wishing to do so “must present herself to Paris’s main police station to obtain authorisation.”
  Though relaxed over the years (in 1892 to “as long as the woman is holding the reins of a horse”; in 1909 to if “on a bicycle or holding it by the handlebars”), the decree was never repealed.
  And that, says Evelyne Pisier, a law professor whose book Le Droit des Femmes (The Rights of Women) unearthed the regulation, means that Parisian policewomen, who must wears trousers as part of the uniform, are all law-breakers.The law has never been withdrawn.

As Obelix would say: "Funny chaps these policemen!"</sub>