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Romania's accession to Schengen area not to be on JHA Council of December agenda
Romania's and Bulgaria's accession to the Schengen area will not be on the agenda of the Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Council meeting of December, but it will be discussed in an informal meeting of the JHA Council, sources of the Cypriot EU Council Presidency said on Monday, quoted by Agerpres correspondent.
We have very clearly stated in our discussion in COREPER (the Committee of Permanent Representatives of EU member states) that Bulgaria and Romania have done their homework successfully. You understand that there are certain political criteria not allowing us having this topic in the agenda and I believe this thins was accepted by all parties. We did not want to charge the atmosphere. But everyone admitted that Bulgaria and Romania ended their necessary preparatory work and we hope that in January we shall be able to approach the issue, the cited sources stated.
According to them, within the last COREPER meeting on Romania's and Bulgaria's accession to Schengen there no longer were countries voicing their opposition towards the accession of the two new members to the free circulation zone. In the previous JHA Council meeting of October, the only states voicing their reserves on the two countries' accession to the Schengen area would have been Holland and Germany, although the topic on the agenda of that time was the stage of implementing the Schengen aquis in the two states.
Moreover, it is very important that the two states did not insist for an answer in the previous JHA Council meeting of October, because it would have had greater chances of being a negative one, the cited sources also said.
Last, but not least, they appreciated the fact that Bulgaria did not request the situation be treated separately, in the conditions in which some states invoked the reason of waiting for the conclusions of the future report referring to Romania within the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM), before making a decision concerning the expansion of the Schengen area.
The future formal meeting of the JHA Council will take place in March, next year, during the Irish Presidency of the EU Council.