President Iohannis: Romania is the only country opposing our joining the Schengen area

The only country opposed to Romania’s joining the Schengen area is Romania, president Klauss Iohannis said in an interview for Caleaeuropeana.ro, quoted by News.ro. The president gave the “unfortunate” examples of the way legislation is passed, or various emergency ordinances adopted such as the now repealed Emergency Ordinance OUG 13. “Do you want to hear something surprising? The only country really opposing the accession is Romania. Through the unfortunate way we pass laws and emergency ordinances, and show we don’t know very well what we want. I’m talking about the OUG 13, and about the Corruption Verification Mechanisms CVM; here justice [...] did its job. We are doing well. On the other hand, with Parliament and politicians' responsibility, we still have topics to solve. And approaches of the OUG 13 type, even if they disappeared, show to many European politicians that in Romania things are not still stable in the approach to what is called the rule of law,” Iohannis said, quoted by News.ro. The president made the comments when asked what countries are still opposing Romania’s accession to the Schengen area and what does the country need to further do in order to join. The president also said that “the approaches of some very visible, high-ranking politicians, who allegedly reprimand Brussels or the UE for various points of view are absolutely not good for us.” “On the contrary, they confirm that we still have in Romania a lot of politicians who did not understand very well the rule of law, what are the fundamental values of the European Union, that we still have politicians with nationalist habits, in a negative way.” President Iohannis said no one opposes Romania’s accession for technical reasons, “as no one opposed it from the very beginning, but political opposition did exist and the only way to eliminate it is to show that we are serious people.” “This is where we need to work. We don’t have any enemies in the European Union, contrary to what some local politicians said. On the contrary, we have very many friends and we have very many optimistically waiting for us to succeed in understanding European values,” he added. Asked when the CVM will end, the president mentioned the phasing-out option. “It is possible that we continue to have what is technically called ‘phasing-out’, meaning we move towards ending the CVM. These days we have evaluators visiting and checking how much we progressed in the area, but the discussion turns back to the same topics I have mentioned before.” PM: Romania’s Schengen entry, denied for obsolete political reasons