Translation with deepl:
This is no joke! Two German tourists got a criminal record because they thought Romania had joined the Schengen Area! It all started after the surveillance cameras located near the border line, on the Garbolcz road (Hungary), at the S.P.F. Petea headquarters, around 17.40, issued an alert and transmitted images of two people riding their bicycles from Romania to Hungary, according to PresaSM information.
The images transmitted by the surveillance cameras showed the two people riding around the concrete obstacle and the barrier on the road, illegally crossing the border from Romania into Hungary. The intervention team of S.P.F. Petea was alerted and went to the scene, but the two persons could not be identified and detained.
At the same time, the Hungarian border authorities were informed and sent a team to the area, thus managing to apprehend the two persons. During the border meeting that took place at the S.P.F. Petea headquarters, in order to jointly investigate the border event, the Hungarian border authorities informed that the two persons are German citizens.
According to PresaSM data, in front of the Hungarian authorities, the persons in question declared that they were on holiday and were travelling on bicycles guided by the GPS application of their mobile phones. This is how they arrived in the town of Petea, where the app showed them that there was a border crossing point, as they intended to cross the border from Romania into Hungary. Being used to travelling freely through Europe, without customs controls between countries, they did not know that they could not cross the border there.
A citizen of an EU member has the right to freedom of movement of labor in the EU. However, people are required to show identity documents at the border and be checked if the member state is not in the Schengen Area.
Presently, Romania is not in the Schengen Area (and this is, in fact, a very politically-contentious situation in Romania, as the European Commission considers them to have fulfilled the requirements for over a decade, but they have been repeatedly blocked by other member states from entering, most-recently by Austria).
https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/news/vienna-maintains-veto-against-bulgaria-romanias-schengen-accession/
Same thing with the UK back when they were still members. Part of the EU, not part of Schengen, so you couldn’t just walk off the eurostar without showing your passport. More checks when flying too, had to stay in the non-schengen zone of airports, etc.
Obviously, it’s politically contentious in Romania, but I think most Europeans, just like these Germans, think it’s stupid and counter-intuitive that Romania’s not part of Schengen yet.
Without googling, I assume it’s because somewhere like the Netherlands or Austria needs to placate the far right with symbolic nonsense, that causes Romanians unnecessary delays, and makes them feel like second tier Europeans.
Yeah, though in the UK’s case, that would have been by choice, rather than because their entry had been repeatedly vetoed.
Also, related trivia for those not familiar (despite the fact that it’s been the source of a whole lot of noise due to Brexit), the UK and Ireland have their own mini travel-without-being-stopped-for-identity-documents area, the Common Travel Area.
That is my own impression.
That is not at least Austria’s official justification.
There have been other people who have made other claims with varying degrees of justification. I have seen Romanians who feel that the veto has been aimed at disadvantaging their ports, as lack of Schengen Area membership is an unpredictable and sometimes-quite-long delay for trucks moving freight. I have also seen some Romanians talking about some demands for lumber concessions by Austria that Romania did not grant; these people felt that it was something of a shakedown. The fact that Croatia (with some similar issues) was given membership frequently is pointed out – unlike Romania, Croatia is a popular holiday destination for Austrians, and Croatia not being in Schengen would be an inconvenience for Austrians, though arguably similar migrant issues would also apply to Croatia. Another point that is often raised is that some assertions by Austria as to Romania’s membership causing migrant problems are based on a poorly-supported-and-likely-not-accurate claim by Austria about illegal migrant movements derived from monitoring mobile phones.
But whatever the case, it is something that I have seen a number of Romanians be quite upset about.
I will say that even if one takes Austria’s official position at face value, it’s that EU migration policy needs changes and that they’re basically using the veto on Schengen as leverage to obtain those changes. That is, they aren’t saying that Romania or Bulgaria have actually failed to hold up their end of the requirements. So I expect that even if a Romanian did agree that the official justification was the real reason, said Romanian probably wouldn’t feel very sympathetic to the veto.
The biggest problem with the whole Austria thing is that a few months before, they were ok with Romania joining, officially they didn’t have a thing to say. Then all of a sudden they went 180 degrees, so of course it raises a lot of eyebrows and a lot of theories appear.
So they found an “excuse” and started hammering about how many migrants cross the borders via Bulgaria/Romania and end up in Austria. When reporters asked them, ok but what about Croatia? At present time, the numbers of migrants sneaking via Croatia is significantly higher than from Bulgaria/Romania, why did you let them in Schengen? Their reply was almost always to change the subject or dodge the question.
Both Bulgaria/Romania fulfill all the requirements to join Schengen since 11 years now so yeah, take it as you want. Also, I don’t have the numbers/articles anymore(it was in December last year and I deleted all my Reddit posts/comments) but the numbers brought by Austria regarding migrants was proved to be faaaaar away from the truth and they were artificially pumped.
it seems to me (as an austrian) that the underperforming ruling parties - especially the “conservativ” övp - already started the silly season and that means thinly veiled racism is the rule because the conservatives want the right-wing votes. The sudden change could just be stupidity - the chancellor and his party are not made of the brightest because loyalty counts more atm. i sincerely believe they vetoed romania in the last moment and weren’t even aware what was going on until then …
It’s 100% about the sinti and roma. Doubt anyone would want to inflict damage on Romanian ports.