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After 13 years of waiting, Bulgaria and Romania will partially join Europe’s vast free movement Schengen area on Sunday, allowing travel by air and sea without border checks.
Land border controls will remain in place, however, as Austria opposes Eastern European countries becoming full members of the Schengen area, fearing an influx of asylum seekers.
Despite partial accession, the lifting of restrictions on the air and sea borders between the two countries has important symbolic value.
Foreign policy analyst Stefan Popescu said joining the Schengen Agreement was an “important milestone” for Bulgaria and Romania and represented “an issue of dignity, an issue of belonging to the European Union.” Ta.
“Every Romanian who has to walk in a different lane from other European nationals felt like he was getting special treatment,” he told AFP.
Ivan Petrov, a 35-year-old Bulgarian marketing executive living in France, said he was enthusiastic about stress-free travel and the time he could save.
With the addition of Bulgaria and Romania from Sunday, the Schengen Area will now include 25 of the 27 European Union member states, plus 29 countries: Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
According to the Romanian government, Schengen rules will apply to four ports and 17 airports, with Otopeni Airport near the capital Bucharest being the largest hub for Schengen flights.
The government announced it would deploy more personnel to the airport, from border police to immigration officers, to “assist passengers and detect those attempting to leave Romania illegally.”
Unannounced checks will also be carried out to catch people with false documents and combat human trafficking, including of minors.
Both Bulgaria and Romania want to fully integrate into the Schengen Agreement by the end of the year, but Austria has so far only made concessions to allow access by air and sea.
Croatia joined the EU after Romania and Bulgaria, and became the 27th Schengen member state in January 2023, defeating Romania and Bulgaria.
Created in 1985, more than 400 million people can travel freely within the Schengen Area without internal border checks.
While some have reason to celebrate, truck drivers are feeling left out as they face endless queues at borders with Europe’s neighbors.
Earlier this month, one of Romania’s main road transport unions lamented the huge economic losses caused by long waiting times and called for “urgent measures” to achieve full integration into the Schengen Agreement as soon as possible.
“Romanian carriers lose billions of euros every year due to long waiting times at the border alone,” said Secretary General Radu Dinescu.
The union said truck drivers typically wait between eight and 16 hours at the Hungarian border and 20 to 30 hours at the Bulgarian border, with peak times of three days.
Bulgarian companies have also voiced their anger at the slow pace of progress.
“Only 3% of Bulgarian products are transported by air and sea, while the remaining 97% are transported by land,” said Vasil Verev, chairman of the Bulgarian Industrial Capital Association.
“We currently have 3% of Schengen members and we don’t know when we will be able to join the remaining 97%,” he told AFP.
Both Bucharest and Sofia said there was no going back.
“There is no doubt that this process is irreversible,” Romania’s Interior Minister Catalin Predoiu said this month. “It must be completed by 2024, including the extension to the land border.” he added.
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This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to the text.
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