European Union countries Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria all meet the requirements to become full members of the bloc’s passport-free Schengen area, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Monday quoted by Reuters.
„Schengen is one of the greatest achievements of the European Union, and we should protect and develop it. This means, incidentally, closing the remaining gaps”, he stated in a speech for Prague.
„Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria fulfil all the technical requirements for full membership. I will work to see them become full members”, he added.
On Monday, President Klaus Iohannis sent a message on Twitter thanking German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for Germany’s support for Romania’s Schengen accession, noting that this is a strategic objective for Romania, which meets all the technical requirements.
„I welcome today’s announcement from Prague by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz regarding Germany’s support for Romania’s Schengen accession – a strategic objective of my country, which clearly meets all the technical requirements. I thank him for his personal commitment”, Iohannis wrote, on Twitter.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s statement regarding Germany’s support for Romania’s Schengen accession „is an extremely important announcement, because it is for the first time that Germany, at the highest level, announces, unconditionally, support for Romania’s accession to the Schengen area”, said the Romanian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bogdan Aurescu, for private TV broadcaster Digi24.
The head of Romanian diplomacy added that Scholz „said very clearly that Romania, along with the other candidate states at this moment, meets all the technical conditions for accession and that he will personally support this approach”.
„It is a very important announcement, which comes in addition to the support that France, through President Macron, on the occasion of his visit to Romania in June, made in the same sense and it must also be said very clearly, that these announcements are the result of the efforts and discussions that the President of Romania had with the two European leaders on various occasions”, Aurescu added.
The minister said that the political-diplomatic steps towards Schengen accession „continue and have continued in the last period as well”.
Asked if a similar message is expected from the Dutch side, Aurescu answered: „We continue our active efforts at all levels towards all our European partners, both to those who have already expressed this support in the last years or more recently and also, obviously, towards the Netherlands”.
Bogdan Aurescu wrote on Twitter that accession to Schengen is „an extremely important goal for Romanian citizens”.
