Bulgaria Now Completely Ready to Join Schengen

Bulgaria has now covered all Schengen criteria after the Working Group on Schengen Matters (Sch-Eval) evaluated positively its technical preparedness to join the borderless zone.  

The news was broken by Bulgaria’s Ambassador to the EU Boyko Kotsev after Monday night’s meeting in Brussels of the Working Group on Bulgaria and Romania’s accession to Schengen, as cited by BNT.

After an inspection at the Bulgarian-Turkish border in March, the Schengen working group has decided that Bulgaria meets all technical requirements for land border control.

The mission of the Schengen experts to the Bulgarian-Turkish border in March was the final technical inspection on Bulgaria’s readiness to join the Schengen Area.

Ambassador Kotsev has pointed out that the Schengen working group values highly all of Bulgaria’s efforts – from the political will of the government to the committing of funds to meet the technical criteria.

“The Schengen mission carried out a very careful and specific inspection, and arrived at the conclusion that Bulgaria fully meets the Schengen Agreement membership criteria as far as its control of external land EU borders are concerned,” Kostev said; border control of the Bulgarian-Turkish border was the major problematic area for Bulgaria till now.

“The fact that Monday’s meeting of the working group did not make any technical recommendations is very positive and shows that the government has done some very serious work,” he explained.

With the Sch-Eval approval, there are no more technical requirements for Bulgaria; the next step is the vote in the European Parliament on its position on Bulgaria’s Schengen accession expected to be made on April 12. In late April and early May the report on Bulgaria’s technical preparedness for Schengen membership will also be adopted.

Now that the technical criteria have been met, Bulgaria and Romania are supposed to overcome the political objections to their Schengen accession of France and Germany and some other EU member states who have demanded greater results from Bulgaria in fighting crime and corruption – even though those requirements are not technically part of the Schengen process.  

“As far as a Schengen accession requires unanimity, the position of every single member state is important but all the more so the position of France and Germany. What now should be done – and I think the Bulgarian government is doing it the best possible way – is to convince our partners including France and Germany in the importance of Bulgaria’s external EU portal.

The Hungarian EU Presidency has been eager to achieve a positive decision for the Schengen accession of Bulgaria and Romania before it term ends in June 2011. Even if there is no positive Schengen decision by the end of June, Bulgaria is expected to join the Area anyway by the end of 2011.  

According to the previous report of the Working Party for Schengen Matters, Bulgaria had covered the Schengen Accession criteria as far as the implementation of the Information System and the Supplementary Information Request at the National Entry ( SIS/SIRENE) is concerned, but it had to put additional efforts into dealing with its Turkish border.

Bulgaria's neighbor, Romania, had covered all necessary criteria and was ready to join the border free zone in March, the report said, but had to wait for their fellow EU newcomer to catch up.

Bulgaria was originally supposed to join Schengen together with Romania in March 2011. However, its failure to meet some border control criteria, and the political opposition of France and Germany – backed to date by Sweden and Austria, among others – has left the hopes of the two Balkan states to make it into Schengen up in the air, leaving the Balkan states with the hope to be able to join the Agreement before the end of 2011.

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