Bulgaria should join the visa-free Schengen area before October next year at the latest, according to the clear and concrete deadline President Rumen Radev was given at last week’s European Council meeting in Brussels, Justice Minister Krum Zarkov told Nova TV in an interview Wednesday.
Bulgaria received a clear commitment due to the cabinet’s intensive work in recent weeks and Radev’s international authority said Zarkov.
To make the path for Schengen clear, parliament should adopt several key rule of law-related reforms, though Bulgaria should not worry about the Dutch expecting the country to comply with reports under the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism, which the European Commission suspended in 2019.
“We should not be alarmed by these reports. We have fulfilled our commitments”, said Zarkov.
Radev commented last week that Bulgaria had asked for guarantees that it will certainly become a Schengen member in 2023, preferably by October. He has since commented that he hopes accession can be finalised even before October.
“We are on the way to reaching a deadline for Bulgaria’s entry into Schengen, which must be irreversible,” he said ahead of the European Council meeting in Brussels.
On 8 December, EU ministers approved the Schengen membership of Croatia, but while Austria and the Netherlands blocked that of Bulgaria, Austria did the same for Romania.
(Krassen Nikolov | EURACTIV.bg)
Source: euractiv.com
