A top European official on Wednesday said Romania, Croatia and Bulgaria are ready to join the passport free-Schengen zone which has frustrated their countries for years.
Schengen
Maroš Šefčovič, the vice-president of the European Commission said he was convinced that “Romania, Croatia and Bulgaria are ready to join the Schengen zone and this will happen sooner than later.”
He made his comments after a dramatic plea from a Romanian lawmaker who said his country was being “kept at the door of an exclusive club.”
The discussion came at a sitting of the European Parliament attended by President of the European Commission, Usrula van der Leyen, President of the European Council, Jean Michel and the Czech prime minister, Petr Fiala.
The European Commission in May recommended the three countries join Schengen followowing a special report.
Romania and Bulgaria applied to join the borderless area in 2011, but the Netherlands and France have expressed rule of law concerns, something that has frustrated successive governments.
Rares Bogdan
Here are Rares Bogdan’s comments in full:
„The Czech Republic has been a member of the EU since 2004 and a member of Schengen since 2007. Vaclav Havel, the great Czech politician, said that oil shouldn’t be more important than human rights, nor than the rights of nations. Romania has been a member of the EU since January 2007, and four years later it had fulfilled the conditions for joining Schengen. It is 2022 and we are still waiting.
“For 11 years, my Romanians have been kept at the door of an exclusive club. The most loyal people in the European Union, the most ‘Euro-optimist’, with bearing the marks of collective trauma, we are treated with indifference. We are denied the right to full freedom, even though we have every right to it, both culturally, historically, and politically. Are we still surprised that political movements are emerging to challenge the European system?
Ukraine
„Now shaken by the war in Ukraine, Europe should have learned that indifference costs. Europe was silent on the annexation of Crimea and is now looking …. at Russia’s deadly assault on Ukraine. Romanians are not in any danger, thank God, because we are members of NATO. But there is another danger. They continue to leave their country en masse, and are considered second-class citizens. Seven million left and 20 million remained. It is not right, morally, democratically. When the rules are applied in a discretionary manner, we are no longer talking about democracy.”
“The question for me and my people is when will Romania really be on the European Union’s priority list? It is unacceptable what is happening”, he concluded.
