(BRUSSELS) - The European Union hopes to open up its land borders to nine new countries ahead of schedule so that citizens can enjoy freer intra-EU travel for Christmas, senior officials said Tuesday.

"I hope that a final decision will be taken in November so that the lifting of the land borders can happen, even the week before Christmas," EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini told reporters.

"It would be a very good message... for citizens of the European Union," he said on the sidelines of a meeting of EU justice and interior ministers in Brussels.

Nine of the 10, mainly ex-communist, states that joined the EU in 2004 took a first big step toward joining the Schengen border-free zone at the start of the month when they were connected to its massive police database.

EU president Portugal said an evaluation showed that the nine -- the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia -- have also made good progress on external border security.

"The evaluation has taken place," Portuguese Interior Minister Rui Pereira said. "There are no problems, no technical difficulties, there's no reason to expect any problems to emerge."

"Land borders and sea borders will be opened before December 31," he said.

The 15 signatories of the Schengen Treaty -- the 15 oldest EU members minus Britain and Ireland plus non-EU nations Norway and Iceland -- are due to decide in November whether to start opening internal borders with the newcomers.

Passport controls and obligatory security checks were set to end on land frontiers on December 31 this year, with airports joining the zone from the end of March 2008.

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