A Bulgarian Member of the European Parliament has said that Bulgaria and Romania should remove their border controls if they are not accepted into the Schengen Area by the end of this year.
Andrey Novakov said the neighbors should work with each other to facilitate movement, adding that Austria and the Netherlands’ objections concerning illegal migration are no longer valid, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.
Novakov said in a television interview that long waiting times at the border cost truck drivers lot of money. Many truck drivers choose alternative roads as they do not want to wait at the border, he said.
“For every day lost at the border, a truck’s owner loses 200 euros. Many drivers quit because they don’t want to hang at the borders,” he was quoted as saying.
He also claimed there were irregular border crossing attempts, calling on authorities to act.
Austria continues to be opposed to Bulgaria and Romania joining the Schengen Zone, Novakov said. However, Austrian authorities say they merely want to stop irregular migration to the country.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov, and his Romanian counterpart, Marcel Ciolacu, met earlier this week in Athens to discuss a strategy for the admission of the two countries to the Schengen Area.
During the meeting, Denkov said that lifting the border controls between Bulgaria and Romania and Bulgaria and Greece would have lead to strengthening the external border of the European Union.
With shorter waiting times, there would be less carbon emissions.
The two countries’ prime ministers also said they want to build a new bridge over the Danube, launching a ferry line between Bulgaria’s Ruse and Romania’s Giurgiu.
