Brussels, 21/12/2010 (Agence Europe) - France and Germany informed the Commission on Tuesday 21 December that they had decided to block the accession of Bulgaria and Romania to the Schengen area. European Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström received a letter on Tuesday signed by French and German Home Affairs Ministers Brice Hortefeux and Thomas de Maizière in which they say that it would be “premature” to allow Bulgaria and Romania into the Schengen area by March 2011, the commissioner's spokesman Michele Cercone said. “We believe the decision must be made when these main problems are solved; when there is irreversible progress in the fight against corruption and organised crime,” the letter states. Romanian President Traian Basecu said on Tuesday that the French and German decision was “an act of discrimination” against his country. “The Commission has no view on the content of the letter, as it has no decision-making powers in the matter. It is for member states to come to a unanimous decision,” Cercone noted. Member states' experts have recently travelled to Romania and Bulgaria and will report back in January so that governments can come to a decision. With this move, France and Germany have made it abundantly clear that there will be no unanimity and that the accession of Bulgaria and Romania will have to be deferred, to an as yet unknown date. France has said over the last few months that it wanted to make sure that no decision on the entry of the two countries to the Schengen area would be taken before summer 2011, and certainly not in March as the two were hoping. The French-German decision is also a signal to the incoming Hungarian Presidency of the EU Council of Ministers which has made extension of the Schengen Area to include these two countries one of its priorities (see EUROPE 10281). (B.C./transl.rt)