Although Schengen accession is not an agenda item of the EU summit in Brussels, Bulgaria asked for guarantees on Thursday that it will become a Schengen member, specifying an October 2023 deadline, according to Euractiv.
“We are on our way to reaching an exact deadline for Bulgaria’s entry into Schengen, which must be irreversible,” Bulgarian President Rumen Radev said on Thursday on the sidelines of the European Council meeting in Brussels.
The deadline for the country’s entry into Schengen should be October 2023, he said, expressing hopes that it could happen even earlier.
Bulgaria’s Schengen membership was blocked on 8 December by Austria and the Netherlands. Romania’s accession was stopped only by Austria, while ministers voted for Croatia to be a full member of the passport-free zone from January 2023 by a unanimous decision.
“We have more and more support and I am convinced that we will be accepted by October at the latest. Of course, we will do everything possible to speed up this deadline,” Radev said in Brussels.
The Bulgarian Parliament should adopt two key judicial reforms as quickly as possible, he said. One is to create a mechanism to hold the General Prosecutor accountable, which is currently outside the institutional system of checks and balances.
The other reform is related to the adoption of a new anti-corruption law. These two laws are also a condition for granting the entire amount under the Bulgarian Recovery Plan.
Radev said that at least, it was clear now what Austria and the Netherlands wanted for Bulgaria to become a Schengen member.