2023-04-26 16:56:00
Interior Minister Karner dampened Bucharest’s hopes on a timetable for joining the border-free area.
Romania has a clear goal: the country on the eastern border of the EU is to join the Schengen area before the end of this year – is this what the government under Prime Minister Nicolae-Ionel Ciuc wants? But Austria could thwart these plans once again. In any case, Interior Minister Gerhard Karner gave his Romanian counterpart, Lucian Bode, no hope of lifting the Schengen blockade in the foreseeable future on Wednesday in Bucharest.
The ÖVP politician even rejected a rough timetable for Romania’s accession: “We are currently still a long way from the system working,” said Karner. The government in Vienna is therefore known to rely on restrictive external border protection – and above all makes the EU Commission responsible: The construction of “physical barriers”, as border fences are called in official parlance, should in future be financed with money from the EU pot, is the demand. “Only a functioning external border protection enables unlimited freedom of travel within the European Union,” emphasized Karner yesterday.
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