Romania counting on German support for full Schengen membership, PM says

Romanian prime minister Marcel Ciolacu recently said that his government is counting on Germany’s support for full Schengen membership.

The statement came after the PM had a meeting with German chancellor Olaf Scholz in Bucharest. The two talked about deepening bilateral relations, economic and security cooperation, Romania's full accession to Schengen, as well as European interest topics, in the context of the upcoming European Parliament elections, according to News.ro.

They also discussed Germany being Romania's most important commercial partner and the second-largest investor in the Romanian economy.

"An important objective of the Government is to stimulate investments, using all the opportunities that Romania has including 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, defense industry, and many others," stated Marcel Ciolacu.

Ciolacu thanked his German counterpart for his country's support and his personal support for Romania's accession to Schengen. He said Romania relies on Germany’s support to eliminate border controls at land borders as soon as possible.

"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,” declared Olaf Scholz at the conference in Romania organized by the Party of European Socialists, cited by News.ro.

The two officials also talked about the security threats generated by the Russian aggression against Ukraine right at the European borders, prospects for the European Union's expansion, and the challenges related to the migration phenomenon.

The German chancellor also said that a month ago, at the last party meeting in Rome, he said that “the war in Ukraine will stop when president Putin decides to withdraw his troops, but he will make this decision only if he realizes that he cannot win the war on the battlefield, that he cannot dictate an unjust peace, that time is not on his side.”