Hannah GraceHow long is the external border of the #Schengen area?
Plus points for guessing the percentage of land vs sea border in the comments.
| 500 000 km | |
| 100 000 km | |
| 50 000 km | |
| don’t know |
Poll ends at .
The correct answer according to the Schengen brochure on the EU website is 50 000km, with 20% land and 80% sea border.
I realised this question can be tricky though, because of how the granularity measuring borders can differ.
Source: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/80ecdde3-f58f-11ef-b7db-01aa75ed71a1/language-en?WT.mc_id=Selectedpublications&WT.ria_c=41957&WT.ria_f=9780&WT.ria_ev=search&WT.URL=https%3A%2F%2Fop.europa.eu%2Fen%2Fweb%2Fgeneral-publications%2Feucareersmaterial
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Alex o_O@hpod16 the map on this page is a bit weird isn’t it? It has both Ireland and the balkans filled in despite neither being Schengen and balkans (mostly) not EU, yet it has uncoloured the UK. So it’s not painting Schengen, not EU and not Europe? Is the colouring arbitrary, or leaving UK out out of spite? 😅
M@hpod16 I'm surprised by people guessing above 50,000 km. Even 50K km is surprising considering the circumference of Earth itself. I would guess most of it is sea border, probably around 75%+, just by imagining its shape and where the outer border would pass even if we just assume the legal "territorial waters" limit.
Albert CardonaMeasuring borders is hard. I recall the anecdote that Portugal has about twice as much border with Spain than Spain has with Portugal. Boils down to granularity of measurement. The archetypical example is measuring the length of a beach: roughly, or by counting the contour of every grain of sand by the water? The latter can be much, much longer than the former.
@albertcardona I honestly didn't consider this fact at all. You're right about the granularity. I took the number from a Commission brochure without thinking.
@hpod16 @albertcardona only counting land borders should be fine though. Usually it's a couple of landmarks with straight lines in between or fairly regular rivers.
Not as easy in Europe as in Canada/US, but doable :D
Not as easy in Europe as in Canada/US, but doable :D
Yet another Josh 
lexi hexi (none, they)@hpod16 i guess land borders would be 5% or so, since the borders on water go around quite a few Islands and the costal line on Atlantic, Baltic and Mediterranean Sea are incredibly long.