Polish EU presidency sources told the Brussels press today (20 September) that Warsaw was hoping EU home affairs ministers would agree on Thursday to a two-phase approach for Romania's and Bulgaria's Schengen accession.
Accordingly, Romania and Bulgaria would join on 31 October with only their air and sea borders 'opened'. Full membership would be possible after the next report on the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism due next summer (see 'Background').
However, it also emerged that the Netherlands was still unwilling to make any compromise and rejected the two-phase approach. The Dutch immigration minister Gerd Leers said last week that his country would veto an expansion of the Schengen open border area to include Romania and Bulgaria because neither country had worked hard enough to tackle corruption.
An attempt to reach the face-saving compromise will be first held tomorrow (21 September) among EU ambassadors, before the ministerial meeting on Thursday (22 September).
If the Netherlands maintains its veto, Schengen enlargement would be dropped from the ministerial meeting's agenda, diplomats explained. In that case, the issue would be raised at the 17-18 October EU summit, a diplomat from an older EU member explained.
Elections always the excuse?
A diplomat from a large Western European country, who preferred not to be quoted, said humorously that no decision to enlarge Schengen's land borders could be expected before the French elections, due in May 2012.
Other diplomats confirmed that the Netherlands were not the only skeptical country, and that Finland, France and others were 'quite happy' they didn't have to block Schengen enlargement themselves.
All diplomats admitted that no security threats had been identified from the possible Schengen enlargement to Romania and Bulgaria. However, some conceded that national goverments in some countries had take negative public opinion and their eurosceptic parliaments into account.
In the meantime, Sofia and Bucharest have hardly made their case easier with respect to their Dutch partners. Romania blocked a shipment of Dutch flowers and bulbs at its borders, on suspicion of a mysterious bacterium. Officials in Bucharest said the case was 'unrelated' to the country's Schengen bid.
Romania's foreign minister Teodor Baconschi says the Dutch position on Schengen showed that the government was being 'taken hostage by the extreme right'.
But Bulgaria didn't mince its words either, with its foreign minister Nickolay Mladenov warning that if its bid was to be rejected on Thursday, Sofia would veto the Schengen reform, recently proposed by France and Italy.
Western diplomats avoided commenting on the Bulgarian minister's position, reminding that the country was in period of political campaigns, with presidential and local elections due on 23 October.
The accession of new members to Schengen in two phases is not a novelty in EU history. However, up to now the decisions had been taken with a singe legal act, stipulating the accession dates for both phases. In the case of Bulgaria and Romania, specifying a date for the accession of land borders was not possible and a second legal act would be necessary, diplomats explained.
