Unlike Romania, Bulgaria will not take a hard line to try to lift Austria’s veto against its entry into the Schengen area, given that the Netherlands also opposes Sofia’s entry, several diplomatic sources in the Bulgarian capital told Euractiv.

The government, led by Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov, will instead rely on diplomacy, hoping that if the Netherlands can be persuaded to drop its opposition, Austria will also relent.

“In recent months, Bulgaria has implemented a number of reforms aimed at strengthening the rule of law and fighting corruption. Difficult reforms were postponed for years. These efforts must continue,” former Bulgarian justice minister Nadiya Yordanova, who is now a member of parliament from the ruling coalition in Sofia, told Euractiv.

Former Prime Minister Kyril Petkov, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the new parliament, for his part says that the new anti-corruption legislation is “Bulgaria’s key to Schengen and a real fight against corruption.”

At the end of last year, the interim government led by Galab Donev and supported by President Rumen Radev declared that accession to the Schengen agreement became the main goal of the country’s foreign policy, but political turmoil in Sofia prevented it from gaining the support of European political families and contributed to the veto of the Netherlands and Austria.

President Radev initially stated that Bulgaria would take a tough stance towards The Hague and Vienna, but quickly softened his stance.

Denkov’s new government, backed by a pro-European majority in parliament, has in turn abandoned its aggressive stance, and Sofia’s foreign ministry said in a statement sent to Reuters that “bilateral cooperation with Austria is based on the conclusions of the two countries’ action plan against illegal migration, implemented at the level of the Ministries of Internal Affairs”.

The Romanian government takes a tough stance against Austria regarding Schengen

​Prime Minister Marcel Călăcu reiterated on Monday that if Austria votes again against Romania joining the Schengen area in December, the Romanian state will launch an attack on the European Court of Justice, an approach in which it wants to have the European Council as its partner Parliament and by the European Commission.

The European institutions mentioned by Čolak expressed their support for Romania’s accession to Schengen.

“If Schengen is so broken, I have no problem with Austria leaving Schengen to build kilometers of walls with barbed wire and electricity. If Austria wants this approach with fences to pay for them, leave Schengen, and we will manage without any problems inside Schengen,” said the Romanian Prime Minister, among other things.

“If Austria votes against Romania’s accession to the Schengen zone in December, I will appeal to the EU Court. In addition, I want that in this approach, and this was an attack on the Romanian state, not on an individual, where there are other procedures, I want to have as partners in this attack on the CJEU the Council of the EU, the Parliament of the EU and the EU, which they support and announced it,” he said.

Speaking about the Dutch veto on Bulgaria, Marcel Čolaku reminded that in the meantime the MCV had been raised for both Romania and the neighboring country. “We are also waiting for the Netherlands’ decision on Bulgaria to see if we can go together,” he explained.

Romania is blocking Austria’s approach to NATO

Also on Monday, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu confirmed that Romania opposes the access of two Austrian army officers to the NATO meeting, after the information appeared over the weekend in the Austrian press.

Salzburger Nachrichten and Oberösterreichische Nachrichten reported in their Saturday editions that this was in response to the Austrian government’s veto of Schengen.

The Romanian delegation to NATO did not want to comment on this issue. In a statement, a NATO spokesman emphasized Austria’s gratitude as a long-standing partner and said: “We count on Romania and Austria to resolve any bilateral issues that may affect the work of Austrian officers at NATO posts.”

A voluntary deployment must be approved by all 31 NATO members.

On Monday evening, when asked by Antena 3 whether this information is true, Prime Minister Marcel Cholaku answered: “Absolutely!”.

He specified that, in his opinion, 7 billion euros, which Austria bought gas and oil from Russia since the beginning of the war, are being used to fuel the conflict that Russia started in Ukraine.

How the Austrian government justifies the vote against Romania’s accession to Schengen

The conservative government led by Karl Nehhammer insists that the Schengen system is not working. The refusal in December 2022 to allow Romania and Bulgaria to join was based mainly on figures from the Austrian Ministry of the Interior: 100,000 “illegal border crossings” in Austria, of which 75,000 were not registered in any other EU country.

However, the most active route of migration to the EU is not through Romania and Bulgaria, and this is also confirmed by Frontex data.

The Western Balkan route is one of the main migration routes to Europe. The Western Balkan route refers to illegal arrivals to the EU through this region, which includes: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia. Thus, the arrival to Austria could take place mainly through Hungary and Croatia.

Why can’t Austria see the evidence?

The speech of officials in Vienna is mostly intended for internal use. In the pre-election years of 2022, 2023 and 2024, the authorities faced an obvious problem.

According to Eurostat, the number of asylum applications in Austria has almost tripled from 37,000 to 108,000. They were previously asylum seekers. But they “did not see” each other. As the war in Ukraine began, the asylum centers were filled with refugees and the authorities were overstretched, and many other migrants were on the streets and very visible, which created a real political problem.

In elections earlier this year in Lower Austria, the traditional parties, the conservative ÖVP and the social democratic SPÖ, suffered historic defeats, while the far-right gained ground. Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehhammer explained that the disastrous result achieved by the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) is mainly due to the last “years of crisis”.

The ÖVP achieved its worst result since 1945 and lost its absolute majority in Austria’s lower house.