MEP Eugen Tomac claims that Austria lied when it justified its vote to reject Romania’s accession to the Schengen Area, accusing us of not having the capacity to manage EU borders according to Schengen legislation.
Tomac published on his Facebook page a document of the Council of the European Unionadopted on December 19, 2022, which represents an official decision requiring Austria “to apply Schengen legislation and to remedy the deficiencies identified by the European Commission in the evaluation report carried out in 2020, regarding compliance with Schengen legislation on return”.
“The adopted document highlights the fact that Austria did not operate a series of legislative changes regarding the implementation of the Schengen legislation. In this regard, the Recommendation of the Council of the European Union expressly requires Austria to amend its domestic legislation and transpose the Return Directive in accordance with the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union. At least five articles of Directive 2008/115/EC must be implemented in Austrian law on entry and return, which represent major shortcomings in the implementation of European legislation on migration management.” – explains the Romanian MEP.
Eugen Tomac also states that “in conclusion, this document demonstrates as clearly and unambiguously as possible that Austria has not adapted its internal legislation to effectively manage the issue of migration, a fact noted as early as 2020 by the European Commission”.
“Therefore, all the accusations against Romania were based on a false thesis. The problem of immigrants in Austria is actually an old internal problem, and not one recently discovered by Nehammer who, before being chancellor, was minister of the interior and had the obligation to align his domestic legislation with the European one. This document represents yet another piece of evidence in case we attack, at the Court of Justice of the European Union, the vote of the JAI Council of December 8, 2022. Vote by which Austria unjustifiably restricted our right to move freely through the European Union” – the MEP concludes his message.
Read also
What reason did Austria give when it rejected Romania’s accession to Schengen
Austria claimed – both before the vote on Romania’s accession to Schengen, but also after the vote – that the reason it voted against us was related to the number of “illegal migrants” who transit Romania and arrive in Austria.
“(…) the question of security arises. In Austria we have over 75,000 unregistered people (in the system) and we know that 20,000 illegal migrants have passed through Romania. We know this for sure from Austrian police investigations. Now we have to find a solution to this problem,” he said Karl Nehammer, Chancellor of Austriain December 2022.
And the Austrian Foreign Minister, Alexander Schallenberglinked our country’s acceptance to the decrease in the number of asylum seekers.
“I’m confident that we’ll be able to really take action here in the next few months to get things going so that the numbers go down. Then, for sure, nothing will stand in the way of the expansion of the Schengen area”, said, in December 2022, the Austrian minister, in a conversation with the journalists of the APA press agency in Vienna.
Source: Pro TV
Tags: romania, austria, Schengen, eugen tomac,
Publication date: 11-01-2023 10:22
