Romania: technically perfect but fully undesirable for Schengen

France and Germany representatives in last few weeks expressed their postion in order to block the inclusion of Romania and Bulgaria in Schengen area. Are these based on real issues?

First (rude and less diplomatic) reactions come from Romanian authorities in charge with international “diplomacy”. Meaning that the President Basescu and the external Affairs Minister Baconsky were very vocal, claiming that those who say that Romania accession in Schengen area should be refused, in relation to other matters, such as criminality, corruption, justice etc. are wrong and the monitoring treaty with EU could be denounced unilaterally. Beside of this, they claim that Romania should impose his own pressure related to EU future projects (like Croatia accession in EU) if Romania will not be accepted in Schengen. For regular people this is not such an important objective in relation with hard real life and no explanation regarding benefits was provided. But for politicians from Romania it is important, due to the fact that no major objective was fulfilled in last few years.

The matter is also not so important for regular people from France and Germany. Politicians in these countries might claim the gypsies’ invasion or Moldavians double citizenship offered by President Basescu as “unfriendly” attitude.

This is a partial truth. Regarding gypsies it is clear that, if they are EU citizens, they cannot be stopped to travel in any EU state they desire. For Moldavians’ citizenship, the procedure is enough complicated and we can say that the emigration will not be relevant in next period. But main obstacle for Romania access is related to Bulgaria! Technically Bulgaria is not yet prepared for accession because they have not fulfilled all technical conditions, especially for securing the border with Turkey. And, in this case, as well as for EU accession in 2007, Romania and Bulgaria are treated together. If the Prime Minister of Bulgaria, Boyko Borisov, in 2010 autumn succeded to convince the EU Comission to separe the two countries for Schengen accession… At that time the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Vasile Blaga replied that his separation will be more favorable for Romania than for Bulgaria.

Uffff, the conclusion is that Romania is not responsible for refusal and this will be very useful for Romanian leaders’ image.

On the other hand, France and Germany leaders are right by delaying the free accession for two countries with proven inefficiency in the domains of public order and justice as Romania and Bulgaria. You can find a lot of stories about Bulgarian Mafia’s crimes. Due to weakness of authorities the criminality rises also in Romania and the justice is not working in equal way for all people.

Why the EU leaders wish to import our problems? They have their own in crisis times!

They are more frightened now by illegal immigration, which already raises the unemployment in EU rich states, because these immigrants will not remain in poor countries as Romania and Bulgaria. And this will create additional internal problems for authorities in Germany, France and so on.

A correct and equal chances treatment, claimed by President Basescu seems not to be in the vision of EU leaders in crisis times. No matter if Romania spent a lot of money during last few years for securing the EU borders, if internally the control is weak.

But I might say that is not acceptable to find a major issue in the fact that the Romanian customs employees have too low wages and therefore they are subject for corruption as a France representative declared. Despite on what Romanian authorities will say, blaming Bulgaria, France or Germany for this failure, the truth was expressed by France European Affairs representative Laurent Wauquiez who said ”the door will open only when we will be sure”.