Brussels, 25/04/2012 (Agence Europe) - European Council President Herman Van Rompuy has launched an attack on his Twitter account on the rise of populism in Europe which is posing a threat to “a key achievement of European integration”: freedom of movement within the Schengen area. His comments came on Wednesday 25 April during an official visit to Romania, a country to which, along with Bulgaria, the gates of Schengen are still closed, largely because of the Dutch veto.
Van Rompuy was responding to the events of the weekend when, in France, extreme right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen finished in third position in the presidential election and President Nicolas Sarkozy criticised the Schengen agreements, and, in the Netherlands, the Rutte government collapsed when its extremist ally, Gert Wilders' PVV, withdrew its support. Van Rompuy's tweet comes on the eve of the meeting of EU home affairs ministers in Luxembourg, a meeting at which the French minister, Claude Guéant, and his German opposite number, Hans-Peter Friedrich, would like discussion of governance of the Schengen area and of the options for restoring controls at internal borders. (SP/transl.rt)