The Romanian government announced on Wednesday that Romania and Bulgaria have secured an agreement with Austria to enter the European Schengen area of unrestricted movement by air and water in March 2024.
“After 13 years, Romania is finally going to join Schengen! We have a political agreement on this,” Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu wrote on Facebook.
A “political agreement” has been made between the three nations to extend the zone “to the air and sea borders” of Romania and Bulgaria “from March 2024,” according to a statement released by the interior ministry of Romania.
The debate about opening land borders has been pushed back until the next year.
Beginning in December, Austria—which had blocked the two nations’ membership a year earlier—presented the concept of “Air Schengen.”
It stated that if Brussels strengthened the EU’s exterior borders, it was willing to loosen the regulations controlling aviation travel for Bulgaria and Romania.
At the end of 2022, Romania and Bulgaria—both EU members since 2007—were excluded from the large area where more than 400 million people are free to travel without going through internal borders.
Austria, which has long complained about having to tolerate a disproportionate quantity of illegal immigration due to inadequate border security at the external Schengen borders, refused their applications.
Including 23 of the 27 EU members as well as the countries that border them—Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein—the Schengen region was established in 1985.