Austria’s veto against Romania’s accession to the Schengen area continues to cause internal unrest. In fact, the problems are in Hungary, says Vice Chancellor Werner Kogler.
Jesuit Father Georg Sporschill, who has been doing charity work in Romania for more than 30 years, sees the federal government’s ÖVP-Green veto against Romania’s accession to Schengen as an “internal political move that causes injustice to Romanians”. In an interview with “Kronen-Zeitung” (Sunday edition), Sporschill said: “That’s how my Romanian friends understood it. They love Austria and saw the veto as an imprudence that didn’t help anybody.”
Sporschill founded the Austrian aid organization “Concordia Social Projects” in 1991, which this year received the peace prize from the world Catholic peace movement “Pax Christi International”. “Concordia” manages several charitable projects in Romania, Bulgaria, Kosovo and the Republic of Moldova.
Schallenberg: “Austria is not isolated in the EU”
Chancellor Karl Nehammer and Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (both ÖVP) justified the Austrian veto against Romania and Bulgaria’s entry into Schengen with the increase in illegal migration, also via the Balkan route. From the point of view of the EU Commission and the European Parliament, Romania and Bulgaria have fulfilled all the conditions for Schengen membership.
Bucharest reacted angrily and withdrew its ambassador from Vienna. A special EU summit on the matter is scheduled for 9 February. An accession of Romania and Bulgaria to Schengen “is not realistic” for Nehammer until then.
Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg (ÖVP) explained in an interview with the APA later in the year that Austria was “not isolated” within the EU due to the controversial veto. He fully supports the decision: “It’s a completely normal discussion process.” If Austria, as a country “in the middle of the continent”, has the highest number of asylum applications in Europe, “then something is wrong”.
Kogler: “Then you would have to expel Hungary from Schengen”
Media reports that the matter was raised by ÖVP politicians for domestic reasons were described by Schallenberg as “complete nonsense”. It is short-sighted to believe that “we would make a profit if it suddenly pointed to the high number of asylum applications in Austria”.
Vice-Chancellor Werner Kogler (Greens) recently showed no understanding not for the veto, but for the fact that something had to be changed in the system: “It cannot be that we register more than 100,000 people in Austria according to the rules and then realize that 75,000 to 80,000 were not registered beforehand, he said in an interview with “Kleine Zeitung” (Sunday edition).
(APA)