The present study investigates mortality convergence in the EU’s internal border regions, a perspective that has not been explored before. We examine life expectancy trends in 277 EU border regions from 1995, the year the Schen- gen Treaty came into force, until 2019, the last year before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We chose 1995 as our starting point, as it marks the implementation of the Schengen Agreement, which brought about a notable shift in cross-border mobility for the founding members of the European Union. This development fostered greater eco- nomic, social, and healthcare integration among these coun- tries. During this time, new cohesion policy instruments were also launched, such as the Cohesion Fund [25] and the Interreg programme. While these initiatives aimed pri- marily at enhancing economic and territorial integration, their potential long-term effects on health convergence have yet to be thoroughly examined, as much of the previous research has concentrated on economic outcomes (e.g., [26, 27]). By extending our study into the late 1990s, we not only capture the initial impacts of these institutional changes but also observe the longer-term trends in life expectancy. In addition, we quantify the relative improvements in life expectancy in border regions by comparing them with sev- eral reference groups: (i) neighbouring border regions, (ii) non-border regions within the same country, and (iii) all selected countries combined.