Schengen-Hopeful Romania Arrests 77 Customs Officials

Romanian border policemen patrols in his all terrain van the border between Romania and the Moldovan Republic, near Sculeni checkpoint, some 400 km north-east from Bucharest, on 18 January 2011. Photo by EPA/BGNES

Romanian authorities on Thursday arrested scores of border officials amidst the country's troubled efforts to join the Schengen customs-free zone, local media reported.

Seventy-seven customs officials and border police were arrested on suspicion of corruption. They allegedly took bribes in exchange for turning a blind eye to cigarette smuggling.

According to reports, the group - which worked on Romania's border with Ukraine - was under surveillance during the past six months.

Bulgaria and Romania, which have been coupled ever since their joint accession to the European Union in 2007, aim to enter the border-less zone in March this year, claiming that all requirements for it had been met.

Accession is uncertain, however, since a report on the security of Bulgaria's frontier with Turkey was negative.

In the last weeks of 2010 and the beginning of 2011, key EU member states - most notably France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Finland - declared their opposition to the Schengen accession of the two Balkan states, saying it would be premature as they still face issues with the implementation of the Schengen requirements with respect to controlling what will become their external EU/Schengen borders.

What is more, since December 2010 the Interior Ministers of France and Germany as well as France's EU Affairs Minister Laurent Wauquiez have voiced additional criticism with respect to Bulgaria and Romania as far as the progress in their judicial reform and rule of law is concerned.

They have demanded that the European Commission's post-EU accession monitoring of the two newcomers under the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (most notably EC's annual progress reports expected in July) should be taken into account when deciding upon Bulgaria and Romania's Schengen fitness.

In spite of the assurances made by the government in Sofia that Bulgaria will be fully qualified for Schengen accession by March 2011, it is virtually impossible that Bulgaria and Romania will be approved for entry according to the original deadline.

Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov has recently mentioned he hoped that Bulgaria will make it into Schengen by the end of 2011, which appears to be a more plausible timeline.

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