Luxembourg, 09/06/2011 (Agence Europe) - Several options were tabled by EU home ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Thursday 9 June in order to find a way to settle the issue regarding Bulgaria and Romania's accession to the Schengen area. In their conclusions, ministers first of all recognised that Sofia and Bucharest had met all the technical criteria for joining the area of freedom of movement. This, however, was not sufficient to allow a decision to be taken and ministers therefore agreed to meet again in September 2011 to re-examine the question of the two countries' membership to the Schengen area.
On Thursday, a number of countries including France and Germany did, however, seek to reassure Sofia and Bucharest, suggesting a decision be taken in September 2011, the home minister of France, Claude Guéant, said on the subject of a first step towards accession to be taken by the two countries. In September, a decision would thus be taken to begin the Schengen membership procedure with the opening of air and maritime borders, the French minister explains. At a later date, a second stage would consist of opening land borders.
As a precaution, European experts may be sent to assess the work of Bulgarian and Romanian border guards to verify whether they are correctly applying the Schengen rules and in order to reassure the other members of the Schengen area on Sofia and Bucharest's ability to uphold their commitments. In February, Germany was the first to suggest accession to Schengen in several stages. This may thus serve to convince the last member states that are still very reticent about enlarging the Schengen area.
In particular, the Netherlands takes the view that the decision to allow Romania and Bulgaria to join Schengen should not be taken before July 2012, the Dutch immigration minister, Gerd Leers, said on Thursday. “The Dutch government will take a stance in 2012 on the requests for accession to Schengen made by Bulgaria and Romania, after a probationary period”, he said, cited by AFP. He felt that the two applicant countries should first of all prove their worth with regard to combating corruption and legal reforms. For that, he, like France and Germany, is counting on the report to be published by the Commission in July this year on the cooperation and verification mechanism (CVM), assessing “political” progress made by both states. The report, however, will not necessarily be decisive for The Hague, which said on Thursday that it still wished to wait for a further report of the same kind due in July 2012, after which the Netherlands would then be ready to take a decision.
The French minister believes there is increasing “convergence” in favour of stage-by-stage accession by the two countries. He recalled that Sofia and Bucharest are fully entitled to enter Schengen. The dossier, which was included as a priority of the Hungarian Presidency that hoped to conclude its term of office with a decision on the fate of these two countries, has therefore now been passed on to the Polish Presidency of the EU Council. (S.P./transl.jl)