Romania and Bulgaria's Schengen accession is again in the limelight
Romania and Bulgaria should become Schengen member states as soon as possible, the MEPs on the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs have urged, a communiqué posted on the site of the European Parliament on Monday reads. The two neighbouring states, that joined the European Union in 2007, should have received the status of full fledged members of the free movement area as early as March 2011. All hopes shattered however at that time, although Bucharest and Sofia had consistently followed the accession strategy and met the requirements, complying with all major points in the Schengen acquis. The opposition of such countries as the Netherlands, Austria and Germany has led to the repeated postponement of the two countries' Schengen accession.
One of the evoked reasons included the countries' failure to comply with some of the commitments made under the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism, through which the European Commission is monitoring the evolutions in the justice field. Now the MEPs on the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs have brought again the issue into the focus of attention, saying the Schengen area is a unique system and one of the EU's biggest achievements, and the refusal to receive Bulgaria and Romania as full fledged members has produced negative consequences not only for the two countries, but also for the whole of the European Union. Furthermore, they are opposed to the intensely circulated idea of a partial accession, starting with air and sea borders in a first stage, to be later continued with a prospective land borders accession.
"This two stage approach sets a dangerous precedent which has no solid legal justification and attracts a series of economic, social and political inconveniences for the EU," a communiqué quotes the Bulgarian rapporteur, Sergei Stanishev, a member of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the EP, as saying. Maintaining or reintroducing internal controls in the Schengen area undermines the citizens' confidence in the process of integration and in the European institutions, the MEPs have underlined, adding that the enlargement of the Schengen area should not be affected by deficiencies linked to other policies pursued by the community bloc, such as the asylum and migration policy. Romania and Bulgaria are currently partially applying the Schengen acquis, with checkouts being carried out at their borders. The report issued by the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, without having a legislative significance, is to be submitted in December to the plenary session of the European Parliament, which agreed with Bulgaria and Romania's Schengen accession as early as June 2011, reiterating its standpoint several times since then.
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