The European Commission’s report on Romania’s status for Schengen accession will be discussed on Wednesday in Brussels by the College of Commissioners. The reports on the stage of preparation of Bulgaria and Croatia’s joining Schengen are also on the agenda of tomorrow’s meeting.
Romania faces the opposition of the Netherlands and, more recently, also that of Sweden, whose Parliament gave a negative vote to the Romania’s accession in the Schengen area.
However, according to European sources quoted by the Romanian mass media, the European Commission’s recommendation regarding Romania’s accession to Schengen is a positive one.
The report on the Schengen extension will then go to the Justice and Home Affairs Council (JHA), which would meet on December 8 and 9 and take a decision.
Romanian Prime Minister Nicolae Ciucă said at the end of October that the evaluation report made by the experts of the European Commission and the member states regarding the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to Schengen is “very positive”.
However, the Netherlands did not send its experts to Romania, citing that this mission “was not broad enough”. Also, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bogdan Aurescu, “believes” that “the Netherlands has not yet made a decision regarding Romania’s accession to the Schengen area, he said recently, on Digi 24, that “there is still room for political, diplomatic, technical steps “.
On October 20, the Dutch Parliament adopted a resolution stipulating that the Netherlands should not vote for the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the Schengen area. This, despite the fact that on October 18, the European Parliament massively voted a resolution requesting the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the Schengen area.
The Dutch MPs asked their government not to vote for the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to Schengen, asking to analyze the functioning of the rule of law, the decrease in the level of corruption and organized crime in the two countries. The document adopted by the Dutch Parliament states that problems related to corruption and organized crime in a Schengen country “may cause major problems for the functioning of the border control of the country concerned and could therefore pose security risks for the Netherlands and for the entire Schengen area”.
The Swedish daily Dagens Niheter wrote at the end of last week that after the Netherlands demanded “further investigations” into the rule of law and corruption in Romania, the political opposition in Sweden would also now oppose our country’s accession to Schengen.
According to the proposal, Sweden should say [YES] to the admission of Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia in the framework of the cooperation. But the minority government of Ulf Kristersson has no support in the Stockholm Parliament for its proposal, given that both the Social Democrats and the Sweden Democrats oppose the proposal to expand the Schengen area.