Austrian side never gave any signal of opposition against Romania's Schengen accession before Nov 18

The Austrian side did not signal, before November 18, that it would oppose Romania's accession to Schengen, government sources told AGERPRES.

The said sources specified that, on the contrary, between July 2021 and November 2022, there were almost 30 contacts in which the Austrian side either showed that it supports Romania's accession to Schengen, or appreciated the police and border collaboration between the two states. The last statement of support was on November 16, at the Salzburg Forum, an event organized by the Ministry of Interior in Bucharest.

Including the Austrian Minister of the Interior, Gerhard Karner, reaffirmed on January 24, 2022, during a working meeting he had in Vienna with his Romanian counterpart, Lucian Bode, the support for Romania's accession to the free movement area and appreciates the good operative collaboration on line to combat illegal migration.

According to the abovementioned source, prior to November 18, 2022, when Minister Gerhard Karner announced that Austria does not support Romania's accession to Schengen, bilateral contacts indicated an extremely close police cooperation with positive results, including in matters of migration, no signal being sent regarding the existence of an illegal migratory flow through our country to Austria. Also, the Austrian side did not transmit on any channel, between July 6, 2021 and November 18, 2022, that there were problems related to Romania's accession to the European free movement area.