Austria no longer has any excuse to oppose the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to Schengen after an agreement was reached on Wednesday on a broad reform of the European policy on asylum and migration, state Save Romania Union (USR) MEP Vlad Gheorghe and his colleague from the REPER party, Dragos Pislaru.
“Austria has lost the last piece of the pretext it used to oppose Romania’s entry into Schengen! The European Union has an agreement on migration, the negotiations have just ended. Nehammer has NO more reason to hang on to discriminate against Romanians and humiliate them in the queues through customs,” Vlad Gheorghe posted on a social network, agerpres reports.
“Let’s see if the high-performance tourist team (Klaus) Iohannis, (Marcel) Ciolacu, (Nicolae) Ciuca and friends manage to defend Romania’s interests and impose on the European level the respect that Romanians in the country and in the diaspora deserve,” added the USR MEP, who was co-rapporteur of the last EP resolution regarding Romania’s accession to Schengen.
“Austria no longer has any argument to oppose Romania’s full accession to Schengen. Why? Because the European Parliament and the EU member states reached an agreement today on a broad reform of the European asylum and migration policy. Therefore, any conditioning of Austria becomes useless,” stated in a press release of REPER Dragos Paslaru, a member of the same political group in the EP, Renew.
He asks the Romanian government, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu and President Klaus Iohannis “to use this agreement intelligently at the European level so that Romanians are no longer humiliated in endless queues and Romania’s economy no longer suffers”.
MEP REPER, who is the president of the Employment Committee of the EP, claims that the message from Brussels is clear, “no European should be discriminated on the basis of electoral rhetoric on migration and no member state can blackmail the EU on this issue”.
“Bucharest must now act so that this message is heard more and more loudly in Vienna,” he pleaded.