Romania is counting on Germany’s support for full Schengen membership, Romanian Prime Minister, Marcel Ciolacu, has said.
His comments came after a meeting he had with German chancellor Olaf Scholz in Bucharest, SchengenVisaInfo reports.
According to Romania Insider, the two talked about further strengthening bilateral relations and economic and security cooperation.
The accession of Romania in terms of land borders was also discussed by Ciolacu and Scholz, while emphasising that Germany is Romania’s most important commercial partner.
Romanian Prime Minister, Marcel Ciolacu considered that an important objective of the Government is to stimulate investments, using all the opportunities that his country has, accounting also for those through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan.
The interest of German investors in Romania so far is encouraging and certainly opens up new significant perspectives to cooperate in the transformation of the Romanian economy, starting with projects in transport infrastructure and energy, digitalization, green energy, defence industry, and many others.
Thanking the German chancellor for backing Romania’s full accession to the Schengen Zone, the Romanian PM said that Bucharest relies on Germany’s support in order to abolish border controls at land borders as soon as possible.
Ciolacu thanked the German leader for backing Romania and personally supporting its entry into Schengen. He emphasised Romania’s need for Germany’s help to remove border checks at land borders quickly.
My party, SPD, has always supported Romania’s access to the Schengen area. There are no first or second-class member states of the Union. We are all a united Europe.
Proving Readiness for Schengen
Since March 31, Romania has been part of the Schengen Area by air and sea, with land border accession yet expected to be finalised. The Council of the European Union previously said that a concrete date for land border accession would only be decided after March 31, 2024.
Ahead of partial accession, Romanian airports declared full readiness to embrace “Air Schengen”.
Besides, authorities in Romania have announced that a new terminal will be built at the Henri Coandă International Airport in Otopeni. Airport management has also confirmed such information.
In recent days, new terminals have also been built at the airports in Iași and Timișoara.
However, in spite of partial Schengen accession, the Romanian Member of the European Parliament, Vlad Gheorghe, said that Romanians continue to be controlled upon arrival at Schengen zone countries’ airports.
