Romania Foreign Minister: Only Bulgaria Failed Schengen Test

Several EU states have opposed Bulgaria's Schengen entry, while Romania's final report has been entirely positive, according to Romania's Foreign Minister Teodor Baconschi.

France, Germany and Finland have expressed their concerns towards Bulgaria's Schengen readiness, while the report on Romania has not shown any irregularities, Baconschi has pointed out before Romanian pundits.

He has been positive that Bulgaria will cope with Schengen's technical criteria by the end of March 2011.

"We have done our homework and the level of preparations for the accession [to Schengen] has been confirmed by no fewer than seven evaluation missions. So I would say de facto we already are in Schengen," Baconschi said also on Sunday in an interview for the Financial Times.

"As neighbouring countries [Bulgaria and Romania], we would like to preserve a sense of active solidarity between us. And we hope that if this lack of compliance [by Bulgaria] to the technical criteria is officially confirmed, they will be able to solve the problem very rapidly," the Romanian Foreign Minister has stated.

On January 14 2011, the final report of EU experts on Bulgaria's preparedness for accession to the Schengen Agreement has concluded that the country has not met the technical criteria to join borderless European Schengen Area.The greatest issue for Bulgaria, according to the EC experts, is the border control on its land border with Turkey, which will become an external border for the Schengen Area once Bulgaria joins.

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