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Romania should have a strategy together with Bulgaria with a view to joining the Schengen area, being at the same time extremely important not to remain anchored in the logic in which as long as the migration file is not closed, the subject of Schengen cannot be discussed, said MEP Dragos Tudorache for AGERPRES on Tuesday.
The MEP, who is the vice-president of the Renew Europe Group, referred to this subject in the context of the meeting of the JHA Council on March 9 and 10, whose agenda includes, in the non-legislative activities section, 'The general situation of the Schengen area', but not the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to Schengen.
The March 9-10 meeting is also the first official meeting of the JHA Council after the one in December last year, when the accession of Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria to the Schengen area was also on the agenda. Of these three countries, only the first received the green light, becoming a member of the European free movement area on January 1. In the case of Romania and Bulgaria, there was no unanimity, although the two countries met all the necessary technical conditions, something recognized by the European Commission since 2011, including following the evaluations made by European experts. The opposition came from Austria and the Netherlands, the latter specifying that Bulgaria is not yet ready to enter Schengen.
"There are two options on the table: either we go to the package with Bulgaria - which I recommend we do, which means that we must first of all convince the Netherlands, and then deal with the problem of Austria - or we consider that the problem of the Netherlands cannot be resolved and then the scenario would be the separation from Bulgaria, which technically, legally, I think that now it could be done on a theoretical level, but politically then we have other problems, with other member states that would not want to see the separation", said Tudorache.
He believes that Romania's main strategy must be to convince the Netherlands to work on a scenario in which Romania and Bulgaria together obtain a calendar and some concrete steps to reach the desired decision.
