Austria blocks Romania's Schengen accession

Croatia will join the Schengen passport-free area starting January 1st, 2023, the Czech Presidency of the EU Council announced on Thursday. Home affairs ministers from EU member states who met in Brussels, in the Justice and Home Affairs Council, green lighted the accession of Croatia, a former-Yugoslav republic, which joined the EU in 2013, to the passport-free area where around 400 million people can travel freely, without internal border checks. At the same meeting however, the candidacies of Romania and Bulgaria, which joined the EU in 2007, were rejected. Austria was openly against it while the Netherlands only vetoed Bulgaria.

The regrettable and unjustified attitude of Austria at today s meeting risks affecting European unity and cohesion, which we so much need, especially in the current geo-political context, said Romanian President Klaus Iohannis. Attending the Justice and Home Affairs Council, the Interior Minister in the PSD-PNL-UDMR ruling coalition in Bucharest, Lucian Bode, said the rejection is a vote against the entire European Union and the European unity, which makes Russia happy, hinting at the unusually cordial relations of the Austrian Chancellor, Karl Nehammer with the Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin.

The European unity and stability were given a heavy blow by a state which chose to abandon its European partners at difficult times and serve Russian interests, the Romanian Social Democrat leader Marcel Ciolacu said. He also believes that Romania s rejection is also a failure of the European law, given that the Conservative party in power in Austria is a partner of PNL and UDMR, within the European People s Party. From the opposition, the USR leader Catalin Drula says the decision to leave Romania out is deeply unfair, and that minister Bode should resign.

In turn, George Simion, the head of the nationalist party AUR, in the opposition, has celled for the resignation of the entire Romanian Government and has said the decision in Brussels is a huge failure of the entire Romanian diplomacy. Surprise, sadness and frustration were not only shared by the Romanians. By using its veto right on its own, Austria has in fact offended all other EU members, who supported Romania s candidacy. MEPs in almost all ideological groups voted with outmost majority, in its favour. The European Commission has tirelessly reconfirmed the fact that Romania meets all technical criteria for the Schengen accession.

Beyond any rational arguments, commentators say, electoral strategies have weighed more than anything else, ahead of partial regional elections in January. One of Nehammer s campaign themes, whose party does not stand well in opinion polls, is stopping the so-called wave of illegal migrants who allegedly transit Romania and Bulgaria, something that EU reports and statistics have clearly contradicted. (EE)