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Bulgaria not ready yet for Schengen membership: security expert

12 January 2011 02:00 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Bulgaria is still far from fully prepared to join Schengen area due to shortfalls in four major areas, a former senior official said Tuesday, APA reports quoting Xinhua News Agency.

"Bulgaria is not near to stable and normal readiness for all major Schengen criteria," Tsvetko Tsvetkov, a former deputy interior minister and security expert told Xinhua in an interview.

The most optimistic outlook is that Bulgaria will become part of the visa-free zone created by the Schengen Agreement at the end of 2011, he said, while adding that his own prediction is no accession before 2012.

Bulgaria, said Tsvetkov, is lagging behind in four key areas, namely understanding of the Schengen policy, security, institution-building and technical readiness.

Arguing that the current government has not understood yet what the Schengen policy means, Tsvetkov said that Sofia is not politically ready to rationalize its role and place in the Schengen framework.

Meanwhile, rampant organized crime and smuggling, together with a relatively deficient legal framework, also mean that Bulgaria still falls short of the Schengen requirements on security and institutions, he added.

On technical preparedness, he said that Bulgaria still needs to do more to meet the related criteria and expressed the hope that the country’s performance will pass the appraisal by EU experts by March.

The Schengen area currently comprises more than two dozen European countries. It has border controls for travellers entering and leaving the zone, but has no such measures within the area.