Romania and Bulgaria have been working hard to protect their borders and have done a lot to rein in illegal migration, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said on Facebook on Friday, adding that the two countries should have been allowed to join the European Union’s Schengen zone.
Referring to a Thursday vote in the European Parliament, Szijjártó said that Croatia had been granted Schengen status, while Romania and Bulgaria were rejected “whereas both were deserving”.
Szijjártó insisted that their rejection was due to a veto by Austria and the Netherlands, while “everybody else was in support”. He regretted that “wailing journalists of the liberal mainstream, Brussels bureaucrats, and ministers of liberal governments” were silent, whereas all new positions presented by the Hungarian government were met with “clamourous” criticism.
“If a central European country uses their veto, that is the end of the world and destroying European unity, while a veto by western Europeans is okay,” he said.
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Source: MTI
1 Comment
Some nuance here – to say that not everyone is happy with Austria’s position would be an understatement. A little bit of background, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer an immigration hardliner and awkwardly enough on good terms with Mr. Orbán.
More in depth:
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/12/07/croatia-set-to-join-schengen-but-austria-main-hold-out-against-romania-and-bulgarias-joint
Romania’s accession should have been feasible, were it not for the unfortunate fact that its lot became intertwined with Bulgaria – who apart from also have rule of law issues to contend with – https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/global/2022/Bulgaria
Spoiler: in this rule of law index, we rank 31 out of 31 with Bulgaria at 30. We can and must do better.