PM: Romania will request a vote on Schengen accession at the Justice and Internal Affairs Council

Romania will ask for a vote on Schengen accession on Thursday, because “the state of uncertainty cannot continue”, Romanian Prime Minister Nicolae Ciucă announced today. Until then, negotiations will take place for Austria to vote in favor, especially since there would be pressure on the country that opposes Romania’s admission to Schengen. According to the Romanian PM, all member states, except Austria, support Romania’s entry into Schengen.

The Prime Minister declared, on Wednesday, that there is no real justification for Austria’s rejection of accession, and blocking Romania’s access to Schengen “will not bring the answers desired” by this country.

“One day before the JHA Council in Brussels, which brings together the ministers of the interior of the member states, we continue to make efforts energetically and using all available channels, levels and instruments to achieve the result desired by Romania”, declared Nicolae Ciucă, on Wednesday, at the Government.

According to the prime minister, “at this moment, all the member states support us in advancing the accession, including the Netherlands and Sweden, with the exception of Austria”. “We are determined to go all the way in these efforts, including by asking for a vote for Romania in the JAI council tomorrow, December 8. The current state of uncertainty cannot continue. We have all the arguments, very solid, that support our requests. We will ask for a decision to be formulated by vote, without any delay or procrastination, for Romania“, he argued.

The prime minister claims that the data, including those from Frontex, confirm that Romania is not on migration flows that would generate fears. “We basically can’t talk about a real justification at this point. We understand that the issue of migration is sensitive in many member states, but blocking Romania’s accession will not bring the answers desired by Austria, on the contrary, Romania’s accession will make the Schengen area even safer”, stated the Prime Minister. Ciucă said that this evaluation is also supported by the other partners and European institutions and the other member states.

The fact that Romania will ask for a vote on Schengen accession tomorrow had been disclosed by government sources previously in the morning.

“We remain firmly involved and engaged in the negotiations. We are negotiating until the last moment, Austria is completely isolated at the European level and we will continue all possible steps we can take,” government sources said. Sources from the Coalition claim that Austria is still pressuring that the accession of Romania and Bulgaria is not on the agenda tomorrow.

The Netherlands and Sweden, which had expressed reservations, finally announced that they support Romania’s accession to Schengen. The Netherlands, however, kept its reservation regarding Bulgaria.

Yesterday, Chancellor Olaf Sholz sent Austria to explain its position or vote for Romania’s accession to Schengen.

According to the cited sources, work is being done to decouple Romania’s file from Bulgaria. The MEPs have publicly stated that they are using all the arguments to get to the vote and to convince Austria, dismantling the arguments that Vienna comes up with, the main one being migrants. If Romania does not receive a positive vote tomorrow, it may not be taken into account, and the vote will be at the European Council between December 14 and 16.

Official data, which come from European institutions, not only from the Romanian ones, show that our country does not contribute to the increase in the number of illegal entries into Austria. The latest data centralized by the European border police agency FRONTEX shows that in the first nine months of the year, three times as many attempts to irregularly cross the Union’s external borders were reported on all routes in the Western Balkans. That’s almost 130 thousand attempts, and Austria claims that this is the reason why it faces more than 100 thousand asylum applications. Romania’s argument is that it is not on any of the Western Balkan routes and it comes up with figures to argue its position. If the Western Balkans route registered a total increase of 170%, in Romania there were 43% fewer attempted illegal entries.