Until the opening of the Karawanks Motorway Tunnel in 1991, the Wurzenpass along with the eastern Loibl (Ljubelj) was one of the main arteries for traffic from Austria through former Yugoslavia, starting point of the notorious autoput highway to Greece and Turkey. When Slovenia joined the European Union on 1 May 2004, customs controls were removed from the border. As Slovenia entered the Schengen Area in 2007, passport controls with police checkpoints were consequently abolished on 21 December 2007.