FM Erjavec Pledges Support for Romania's Admission to Schengen
"We share similar views when assessing the situation in the region, the Western Balkans, we both support full-fledged membership for Western Balkan countries in the EU," Erjavec told a joint press conference after talks as part of Corlatean's official visit to the country.
The two countries also support the tightening of relations between the EU and Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia as part of the Eastern Partnership and expect the bloc to sign the association and free-trade agreement with Ukraine at the upcoming summit in Vilnius, which Romania expects to take "ambitious decisions".
The two ministers also pointed to the substantial untapped potential for their countries to enhance cooperation in trade and business ventures. "Bilateral trade is currently worth 500 million euros, and we share the view that this could be substantially increased," Erjavec said.
As part of these efforts, the Romanian foreign minister will be attending today a bilateral business conference hosted by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GZS). He said that he had discussed with Erjavec the possibility of joint forays into markets of Central Asia and Middle East.
They also discussed the need to improve infrastructural and transport links between the countries, including the project to modernise the transport route between the ports of Constanta in Romania and Koper in Slovenia.
"The corridor is fully operational in terms of motorway cargo transport, but our goal is to modernise the rail part of the corridor as well," Erjavec said.
Romania's key goal at the moment is to join the Schengen zone as soon as possible. Erjavec underscored Slovenia's "strong support" for Romania's efforts, pledging the country would also back Romania's bid at the December summit of the EU.
Corlatean said that Romania had already met "objective criteria" to be admitted in the Schengen area, something that the European Commission had established back in 2011, and that it had invested over EUR 1bn in what he said was currently the best technology in Europe, team training and contributions to Frontex missions.
Romania is currently working on political and diplomatic activities to secure support of EU members, the majority of which Corlatean said were in favour of Romania and Bulgaria's admission to the Schengen area. A few oppose due to what he described as "internal political debates, pre-election situations and similar reasons unrelated to Schengen criteria".