MEP Tomac: Companies invited to join suit at CJEU on non acceptance of Romania into Schengen

People's Movement Party (PMP) Chairman, MEP Eugen Tomac, said on Tuesday that any legal entity in Romania who considers that its activity is affected and its freedom of movement of goods within the EU is restricted can join as a party in the lawsuit it has filed at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) against the EU Council in the case of the Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Council's refusal to accept Romania's entry into the Schengen area and can claim damages.

"Any Romanian legal entity that considers that its activity is affected and its freedom of movement of goods within the EU area is restricted can join as a party to the lawsuit. Romanian companies can also claim damages in this lawsuit, as they are restricted access to the Single European Market through an abuse of power by Austria," Tomac said at a press conference, Agerpres reports.

He also argued his case before the CJEU.

"At the JHA meeting of 8 December 2022, the political negotiation should have been done in accordance with the recommendations of the European Commission and the European Parliament, which unanimously called for the admission of all three countries to the Schengen area. The Council, however, took two decisions: it accepted Croatia, a country that has met the criteria since 2021, but rejected Romania and Bulgaria, countries that have met the conditions for being accepted into Schengen since 2011! In this case, the unanimity rule was applied in a discriminatory manner, violating several articles of the EU Treaty (TEU), the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU) and also fundamental principles of European law.This legal conflict should have been challenged by the Romanian Government, through an action for annulment, on the basis of Article 263 of the TFEU, as fundamental procedural rules were violated and the Treaty of Accession of Romania to the EU was violated through an abuse of power by Austria. The action had to be formulated within two months, according to the provisions of the TFEU. At the same time, we launched the preliminary stage of an action under Article 265 of the TFEU and we formally requested the EU Council to act for the full application of the provisions of the Schengen acquis in Romania," detailed Tomac.

According to the PMP leader, the response he received from the EU Council was "evasive and unsatisfactory," which is why a new action was filed at the CJEU.

"Given that within two months the EU Council had to clarify its position on the unlawfulness of the abstention, and the JHA Council had an obligation to put an end to the abstention from action by taking appropriate measures, the reply received from the Council in April 2023 proved evasive and unsatisfactory. And that is because it explicitly maintained its refusal to act, despite the terms of our preliminary referral. This position of the Council constitutes a persistent failure to act, thus giving rise to our right to refer the matter to the CJEU," Tomac pointed out.

In this context, he said that he had referred the matter to the European Commission and asked for an investigation to be launched so that the government in Vienna could explain why it was ignoring the sanctions policy against Russia and sabotaging the EU.

"In this challenging context, with war on Romania's borders, our access to the Schengen area would have strengthened the European Union, which has introduced 11 sanctions packages against Russia. These sanctions are designed to weaken Russia's economic base and reduce its ability to wage war. But not all countries have aligned themselves with this position. According to the official data we obtained from Eurostat, which has recently updated its reports for the year 2022, we can see that while the trend at EU level is to significantly reduce trade with Russia, the situation is totally different for Austria. The value of products imported into Austria from Russia for the last few years looks like this: (...) in 2022 - 7,333,072,139 euros (252% increase compared to 2019 and 98.53% compared to 2021). In these conditions, Austria has practically doubled its trade with goods imported from Russia since the beginning of the war," concluded the PMP leader.