Eugen Tomac, for Radio Moldova: The vote of Austria and the Netherlands against Romania's accession to the Schengen Area is an unjustified boycott
The vote of Austria and the Netherlands against Romania's accession to the Schengen Area is an offensive one for Romanians. But the procedure can be restarted from the beginning, so that in about two years, Romania could be accepted in the Schengen area, said MEP Eugen Tomac for Radio Moldova.
"It is an unjustified boycott of Romania by the two states, firstly because we meet the criteria, secondly because the treaty says very clearly, a country is accepted in the Schengen area when it meets all the conditions set by the European Commission. However, at the present time, the European Commission has clearly said that Romania and Bulgaria, including Croatia, deserve to be accepted in the Schengen area. Instead, for political, extremely cynical reasons, the two states coordinated and put us in an impossible situation today", emphasized Eugen Tomac. The European official called today's vote by Austria and the Netherlands an "extremely painful humiliation", but assured that Romania will restart the whole procedure from the beginning, even if this will take some time. "Time is on our side and we have a lot to recover from, but this humiliation is extremely painful because we did absolutely nothing wrong. We will start this procedure from the beginning. The only issue is that this reality will happen in a much longer time than even the most optimistic pro-Europeans in Romania expect", emphasized the MEP. We remind you that Romania, which has been waiting for entry into Schengen for 11 years, does not enter the European area of free movement this time either, although it had the support of 26 EU member states. Austria managed to block the favorable decision in the JHA Council, as unanimity is required for Schengen accession. The Netherlands joined it, under the conditions in which it opposes the accession of Bulgaria, and the vote was given "together with Romania"
