Photo: BGNES/ERA
The ongoing war between Israel and Hamas is hastening the return of internal borders to the European Union, which analysts say also ends the hopes of Romania and Bulgaria to join the Schengen area.
Italy restored Slovenia’s border controls on 18 October. Then, the next day, Slovenia reestablished its own checkpoints with Croatia and Hungary.
“The return of violence in the Middle East is likely to delay Romania and Bulgaria’s entry into Schengen,” Alison Mutler, a former AP correspondent who now runs the Romanian news site Universul.net, told the Brussels Signal in an interview.
Spain has proposed holding a vote on the two countries’ membership of the 27-member Schengen visa-free zone during a meeting of EU justice and home affairs ministers on December 5-6. A unanimous affirmative vote will be required for both countries to join. Austria and the Netherlands have already vetoed Bulgaria’s entry due to problems with illegal migration, and Austria has also vetoed Romania.
Overcoming the objections of these governments was a priority for the diplomacy of both countries. At times this escalated into conflict, with Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Călăcu threatening a partial Austrian gas project in the Black Sea if Austria did not lift its veto.
For both countries, being able to enter the Schengen area “would help their economies,” Mutler said.
Countries in the zone, which currently includes all EU countries except Bulgaria, Cyprus, Ireland and Romania, do not carry out immigration checks at their common borders with other Schengen members.
Croatia most recently joined earlier this year. Non-EU countries Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein are also part of the Schengen area.
Mutler said that with the increased number of migrants from the Middle East entering the EU through the Balkans, “she is not sure that the Romanians and Bulgarians are prepared to deal with the influx of migrants – something they have never seen, including during the wave of 2015”.
In 2015, 1.3 million people arrived in Europe as migrants or asylum seekers – the most for any year since World War II, amid civil wars in Libya, Syria and Iraq.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, in the first nine months of 2023, this number reached its highest level since 2016.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wrote in X that it was the “deterioration of the situation in the Middle East” and the “increase in migration flows along the Balkan route” that necessitated Italy’s “suspension of the Schengen Agreement for free movement in Europe”.
The latest migration developments, which coincide with a number of bomb threats in Europe, represent “a kind of repeat of the crisis of 2015, which is a convergence between a migrant crisis and a terrorist crisis,” said Pierre Berthelet, an expert on border management and law. , working in the Migration Department of the European Commission.
As EU members gradually restore border controls with their European neighbours, he asked: “Are the foundations of the EU shifting from an economic basis to a more security-related basis?”
Necifor Catalin Ioan, a former Romanian MP and member of the European Parliament, said the restrictions on freedom of movement risked “becoming irreversible”.
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2023-10-21 04:12:00
#war #Israel #Hamas #Schengen #hopes
