Brussels, 24/ 02/ 2011 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 24 February in Brussels, the home affairs ministers of the EU, in their adoption of conclusions by the Hungarian Presidency, have agreed to wait for the latest progress made by Bulgaria in terms of border management, particularly of its borders with Turkey, before deciding whether to allow Bulgaria and Romania to join the free-movement Schengen zone. During the discussion, certain member states, among them France and Germany, backed up by Finland and four or five other member states, also supported the idea that the progress made by the two countries towards observing the technical criteria be assessed with regard to progress on the political elements, in this case the fight against corruption and legal reform.
At this stage, Bucharest has fulfilled all of the technical criteria required to join Schengen, the ministers acknowledged, but Bulgaria has met only six of them, stumbling over the “borders” plank. A further expert mission will take place at the end of March to assess Bulgaria on this point once again. The integration of the political aspects, which France and Germany have put forward as a sine qua non condition, throws the timetable for the two countries out of line: initially, they were set to join the Schengen zone at the end of March 2011, following a decision to this effect at the Council of 24 February. No new date was put forward by the ministers on Thursday.
A number of ideas to break the current deadlock were, however, proposed on Thursday morning, notably by Germany, which suggests that the two countries, whose fates in this issue remain intertwined, could first of all join Schengen by opening up their air borders initially, followed by their land borders in the second phase. With this suggestion, Germany is trying to find a compromise which is satisfactory to Bulgaria and Romania. Some of the member states supported the idea.
On the issue of Schengen, the ministers also discussed the possibility of suspending the Schengen mechanism, in other words of bringing in border controls and closures once again for a state which is already a member of Schengen and which may present risks to its partners. This idea, which is part of the reassessment of the Schengen mechanisms, was also proposed by Germany and supported by a number of other member states. In its extreme version, the principal was raised in January by certain German MEPs in the CDU group, who called for Greece to be removed from the Schengen area, due to its problems with managing flows of illegal immigrants.