Bulgaria will not be admitted to Schengen before Austria’s 2024 parliamentary elections, Bulgarian EPP MEP Andrey Kovatchev told journalists in Strasbourg on Tuesday, adding that Austria had no problem with Bulgaria’s accession until a speech by their interior minister changed the situation last November.
Kovatchev said that “their interior minister decided that this topic could give them a few per cent more, which would raise their results in local elections.”
According to Euractiv sources from the Bulgarian parliament, Sofia hopes to enter the Schengen Zone at least for air travel, by January 2024.
As for the Netherlands, which also imposes a veto on Bulgaria’s admission, Kovatchev stated that it has nothing to do with the Schengen issue, as the main reason is that in the Netherlands they have many Bulgarian citizens who abuse the country’s social system.
However, the publicly known argument of the Netherlands is that Bulgaria has problems with the rule of law. The Bulgarian authorities hope to eliminate these concerns with the constitutional reform currently underway, as well as with the dismissal of chief prosecutor Ivan Geshev, which took place in June.
Kovatchev thinks that there is no possibility that Romania will be separated from Bulgaria for Schengen, as this will require the creation of an external EU border along the Danube River.
On Monday, the European Commission expressed its readiness to organise a new Schengen-related fact-checking mission in Bulgaria at the request of the Netherlands.
The Commission has announced many times that Bulgaria and Romania fulfil the requirements for full Schengen membership and claims it fully supports both nations.
(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)
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