After keeping them waiting for nearly two decades, the EU home affairs ministers granted Romania and Bulgaria access to the Schengen Area starting January 1st, 2025, with a unanimous EU Council decision on Thursday, December 12th.
The vote follows an important meeting organized by the Council’s Hungarian presidency in Budapest at the end of last month where Austria—the most ardent opponent of abolishing two of the last hard borders in Europe due to concerns of illegal migration—agreed to lift its veto at last.
The two countries applied for Schengen membership not long after joining the EU in 2007 and were declared “ready” to join by the European Commission in 2011. The road to accession turned out to be much longer than anticipated and finally happened in large part due to the Hungarian presidency treating the issue as a “top priority” and tirelessly negotiating with the last remaining holdouts, Austria and the Netherlands.
“It’s done. It’s decided. It’s deserved,” EU Parliament President Roberta Metsola celebrated on X. “Congratulations to the people of both countries who have worked hard and long for this.” EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen was quick to follow up with a similar message. “Fully in Schengen—where you belong,” she wrote on X.
In a long statement, Romania’s outgoing president Klaus Iohannis praised the decision and expressed his gratitude to all institutions and officials involved in the negotiations. “Today’s decision is a clear confirmation, without any interpretation, of a reality. Romania’s place is in the Schengen area, based on our performance and commitment,” Iohannis wrote.
While Vienna did recognize that Romania and Bulgaria had achieved great progress in reducing illegal crossings, it still demanded a key concession to be included in the Budapest Declaration which casts a shadow on all these celebrations.
Although the two countries will become full Schengen members from next year as far as EU law goes, the agreement signed by the four countries—Romania, Bulgaria, Austria, and Hungary—provides that they would keep border checks in place for “at least” another six months “to mitigate the potential change of migratory patterns that may arise as an immediate consequence of the absence of internal borders.”
It’s unclear whether these remaining checks would cover the entirety of the borders between Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria or only certain key crossing points. Moreover, by specifying that hard borders could remain in place for “at least” half a year, the agreement also foresees the potential extension of the measure.
