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Romania must be very firm in supporting its Schengen case with the Council of Justice and Home Affairs, in order to get sure that Austria remains isolated in terms of its opposition to the expansion of the free movement area, MEP Victor Negrescu told AGERPRES on Monday evening, expressing his hope that Bulgaria will also try to avoid the appearance of new opponents to its own accession.
MEP Victor Negrescu made these statements in the context in which Tuesday's meeting of the Council of Justice and Home Affairs could seem meaningless, after government sources announced last week that Romania will not ask for a vote on Schengen accession, originally provided for on the provisional agenda.
"Romania must be very firm in supporting its cause, in presenting its final arguments regarding its accession to the Schengen area, and we must make sure that Austria remains isolated in terms of its opposition to the expansion of the free movement area," said the PSD (Social Democratic Party) MEP.
Asked if there are any signs that there could be other states that could oppose Romania's accession to Schengen in the future, Negrescu answered that "at the moment, in principle, the states maintain their favourable position towards Romania and Bulgaria."
"I remind you that last year there were two states that opposed Bulgaria's accession to the Schengen Area (Netherlands and Austria), and only one state opposed Romania. (...) Meanwhile, for example, the Netherlands made a report on the rule of law in Bulgaria, a report with positive elements, and we hope that these comments will not appear again and we hope that no other comments will appear regarding Bulgaria," he added.
However, in the event that a favourable decision is not taken for the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the Schengen area in December, Victor Negrescu believes that there are two options to work with in this case.
"The first option involves appealing to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for a new veto. In this sense, we can take this approach together with the European institutions, the European Parliament or the European Commission, this can be a pro-European approach, to defend European decisions and European treaties," said the Social Democratic MEP.
"Basically, we created the mechanisms for the European Parliament to join an approach initiated by our country in such scenario," said Negrescu.
He also mentioned that the second possible option in this case is that of decoupling from Bulgaria "in case there is still a much wider opposition to Bulgaria's accession to the Schengen area, i.e. if only Austria opposes Romania, decoupling remains a viable solution to put more pressure on Austria".
Also, in this case, a clarification from the Council's legal experts would be needed, in order to establish whether the decoupling requires an agreement from Bulgaria or not.
When asked how long Romania should wait for a favourable decision regarding Schengen accession before resorting to this second scenario, Negrescu stated that a precondition is to have a vote.
"This vote can take place either in COREPER (Committee of the Permanent Representatives of the Governments of the Member States to the European Union), or in an extraordinary council, or in a Justice and Home Affairs Council, sometime at the beginning of the year. In order to be able to trigger the other mechanisms, we need to know how the other states are standing and we can only know this if there was a vote in these decision-making formats at the European level," he explained.
Negrescu specified that a vote in the Council is necessary to appeal the decision to the CJEU, while a vote in COREPER is also sufficient for the decoupling from Bulgaria.
Last but not least, Victor Negrescu appealed to the interested parties in the file to act in the next period "with prudence and diplomacy."
"An exaggerated politicization of the subject risks being harmful to Romania's cause. It is obvious that the Austrian executive has turned this topic of the extension of the Schengen area into an electoral topic. If this topic remains interesting from a political point of view for the Austrian government, automatically that government will continue to oppose (...) We must stay united, coherent and try to prove that Romania deserves to be in Schengen," he pleaded.
If, however, the "legal and logical arguments" are not successfull, he maintains that "alternative options that are available to the member states to act at the European level" must be used.
AGERPRES
