No more traffic jams for vacationers and the euro is coming
Holidaymakers in Croatia can breathe easy. From next year the country will be part of the Schengen area, which means that border controls will be abolished. The responsible ministers of the 26 Schengen countries will agree on this on Thursday in Brussels.
This means that the kilometer-long traffic jams on the border with Croatia, especially in summer, should be a thing of the past. For technical reasons, passport controls at Croatian airports will only be eliminated from March 26th.
This is not the only relief for tourists, because Croatia will also introduce the euro as a means of payment at the beginning of next year.
The world’s largest space with freedom of travel
The Schengen area currently includes 22 EU countries as well as Norway, Liechtenstein, Iceland and Switzerland. There are usually no stationary border controls at the internal borders between these countries. This makes it the world’s largest area of freedom to travel. New members can only be admitted unanimously.
Romania and Bulgaria had also had hopes of joining Croatia in the exclusive club. However, the two south-eastern European countries were rejected.
The Austrian government had already declared in the run-up to the meeting in Brussels that it would vote against the two countries. Austria’s conservative Minister of the Interior, Gerhard Karner, had emphasized that the system was not working in its current form.
The crux of the matter from Vienna’s point of view is the large number of migrants who come to Austria via the Balkan route. According to Karner, there have already been more than “100,000 illegal border crossings” to Austria this year, 75,000 of which had not previously been registered.
In Brussels, however, it is suspected that this veto was mainly for domestic reasons, especially since most migrants come to Austria via Croatia and Hungary. This would mean that these two countries would also be responsible for controlling people at the EU’s external borders.
The statement by the Austrian Minister of the Interior is also not supported by the figures from the border protection agency Frontex. The number of irregular border crossings rose to 281,000 between January and October, which is 77 percent more than in the same period last year. However, the number of people traveling from Romania to Austria without permission was very low.
“The three candidate countries have done what they had to do and they are ready to ensure the protection of our external borders,” said Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas, referring to Vienna’s concerns. “It is unfair not to give them the opportunity they deserve and deserve.”
However, Hungary had also positioned itself against the expansion of the Schengen area. But that was for all sudden surprises. From negotiating circles it is said that Hungary is blocking everything at the moment. In this case, the reason is that the EU has frozen billions in subsidies for Budapest because Hungary is not implementing rule of law reforms in the required form.
Like the EU Commission, Germany supported including all three countries in the Schengen area. Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria are already partially bound by the Schengen rules, but internal border controls with them are expected to continue.