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Persons having absolutely no clue about what negotiations mean have given pieces of advice in respect to Romania's accession to the Schengen Area, Romanian Foreign Affairs Minister Bogdan Aurescu told Digi24.ro media outlet in an interview on Friday, told Agerpres.
The head of the Romanian diplomacy maintained that, in this context, expectations had been raised very much "and that was a mistake."
Referring to a possible future discussion regarding Romania's and Bulgaria's accession to the European free circulation area, Aurescu said that "it is another myth, namely that a calendar for making a decision could be set in the European Council."
Thus "there have been various who have raised expectations, same as there have been some who pointed to the December 8 date as a fixed term, which has raised Romania's expectations very much and this is wrong."
"I hope this should no longer be done, as neither myself nor Mr President Iohannis have ever said that December 8 was a deadline. (...) They raised in vain the expectation for December 8, the overbid for certain. Diplomatic work is not done by setting arbitrary, artificial deadlines. Diplomatic work means construction, detailed work, building brick by brick, stage by state, until you reach a result. And when you reach a result, then you announce it. This is doing your job professionally. I have seen all kinds of pieces of advice given to us by persons having no clue about negotiations or who have never negotiated anything, not even their own salary," the Foreign Minister showed.
He stressed that "self-victimisation at this moment is an error."
"I believe that of we continue to do so, to self-victimise, we, in fact, attack our own self-esteem as a nation, we fuel Russia's propaganda and that of populist and nationalist forces, which, unfortunately, aren't absent in Romania either, and we cannot manage to move further," Bogdan Aurescu added.
The Justice and Home Affairs Council rejected on December 8 the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the Schengen area, with two votes against, in the context of unanimity of votes being required. Out of the 27 EU member states, Austria and the Netherlands voted against, the latter mentioning it only opposed Bulgaria's accession.
