Members of the European Union have confirmed Croatia’s admission to the bloc’s passport-free Schengen area while rejecting applications from Bulgaria and Romania.
The decisions came Thursday at a meeting of EU interior ministers in Brussels.
“Last step complete! Council decision adopted – It is now formally confirmed that Croatia will join the Schengen area as of 1 January 2023,” Croatia’s permanent representation to the EU said in a tweet on Thursday.
“The Schengen area is expanding for the first time in more than a decade,” tweeted the Czech Republic, which holds the rotating EU presidency. “Ministers have approved Croatia’s membership as of January 1, 2023!
EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson said Romania and Bulgaria have been denied access to the area.
“As regards the accession of Romania and Bulgaria, we are not united and that makes us very weak and that also makes me sad,” he said.
“You deserve to be full members of Schengen, you deserve to have access to free movement within the Schengen area,” Johansson said.
Unanimous support
The full accession of new EU members – Bulgaria and Romania joined the bloc in 2007, Croatia in 2013 – required the unanimous support of their partners.
The three countries already partly adhere to the Schengen rules, but internal border controls have yet to be lifted.
The heist has long been linked to concerns among the trio’s partners about the scope of organized crime, unauthorized migration and other security issues.
Last month, the EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, decided that the three candidate countries met the technical criteria for membership, and the European Parliament also voted in favor of their membership.
Croatia’s application met with no notable opposition from its EU partners. But ahead of Thursday’s meeting, Austria seemed all but certain to veto Bulgarian and Romanian offers on immigration, as growing numbers of people cross its borders without permission via the Balkan region.
Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner renewed his country’s fierce opposition, noting that more than 100,000 people have entered Austria this year without permission.
“The system is not working right now,” he told reporters.
Crossings for asylum seekers
The Austrian authorities fear that the abolition of internal border controls will make Bulgaria and Romania compulsory passages for asylum seekers.
Right-wing parliamentarians from the Swedish Democrats Party opposed the membership of the three candidate countries, citing similar concerns.
Romanian Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca said on Wednesday that his government had held “highest-level meetings” with Austria to try to allay concerns, and noted that the data shows that “Romania is not on migratory flows that would generate fears”.
“Illegal migration is politically very sensitive in many member states…but blocking Romania’s accession to Schengen will not bring the answers Austria wants,” he told a conference. release, adding that “the current state of uncertainty cannot continue”.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte also sparked an uproar last week when he alleged that Bulgarian border security officials could accept cash bribes.
The Dutch parliament must also weigh in, which means Bulgaria could be more likely to join later than the other two candidates.
‘Cynicism’
Bulgarian President Rumen Radev hit back, writing on Facebook that three Bulgarian border guards have been killed in recent months while guarding the bloc’s external borders.
“Instead of European solidarity,” Radev said, “Bulgaria receives cynicism.”
In an effort to assuage their partners’ concerns, Bulgaria and Romania have invited EU fact-finding missions with national experts twice in recent months to see how things have improved.
Hungary had also appeared ready to delay its entry, as it has done on several EU issues that require a unanimous vote in recent months, mainly due to objections from the right-wing government that its access to EU funds from pandemic stimulus stalled due to corruption concerns. .
The so-called Schengen area includes 26 countries – 22 EU states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.
Almost 1.7 million people live in one Schengen country and work in another. About 3.5 million people cross an internal border every day without having to show their identity card.
The Schengen regulation allows the free movement of more than 400 million European citizens and businesses, but countries can introduce temporary controls in the event of internal threats to national security, and several do so regularly.
