Croatia joins the European free travel area, Romania and Bulgaria are banned
BRUSSELS/BREGANA BORDER CROSSING BETWEEN CROATIA AND SLOVENIA, Dec 8 (Reuters) – Croatia on Thursday got the green light to join Europe’s open travel area, while Bulgaria and Romania were held back by Austrian-led opposition over concerns about illegal immigration.
From 2023, people will not have to stop for border control when traveling between Croatia and the rest of the so-called Schengen area – the largest free travel area in the world, which is considered one of the main achievements of European integration.
This will “shorten the journey and the wait, thank God,” said driver Nenad Benić as he queued to cross the Bregan border crossing from Croatia to Slovenia on Thursday.
Romanian Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca said he was disappointed and would apply again to enter the area. “We regret and sincerely do not understand Austria’s inflexible position,” he said.
Bulgaria will also try again, its foreign minister said.
After tense talks between the bloc’s interior ministers in Brussels, Croatia got the green light to become the 27th member of the region.
“Citizens of Croatia: welcome, congratulations!”, European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson announced.
“To the citizens of Romania and Bulgaria – you deserve to be full members of Schengen, to have access to free movement… I share the disappointment with the citizens of Bulgaria and Romania.”
Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said he opposed Romania and Bulgaria because of security concerns.
“It is wrong for a system that is not working properly in many places to expand at this point,” he said.
He added that Austria has recorded 100,000 illegal border crossings so far this year, including 75,000 people who were not previously registered in other Schengen countries as they should have been.
The approach needs the unanimous support of all members – the 22 EU countries plus Liechtenstein, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland.
The Netherlands also opposed granting access to Bulgaria, citing concerns about corruption and migration.
Immigration has been a burning issue in Europe since 2015, when more than a million people arrived across the Mediterranean Sea, mostly on smugglers’ boats, prompting the EU to tighten its borders and asylum laws.
UN figures show that around 145,000 people have crossed the sea this year, while more than 1,800 have died trying to reach European shores, far fewer than in 2015.
But the EU’s border police Frontex said last month that 281,000 unauthorized entries were recorded across the EU in the first 10 months of 2022, a 77% increase on the previous year and the most since 2016.
With the Western Balkan route currently most active and the EU accepting millions of Ukrainians fleeing the Russian war, immigration concerns have returned to the fore.
Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska, additional reporting by Bart Meijer and Clement Rossignol, editing by Kirsten Donovan, Crispian Balmer and Andrew Heavens
Our standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.