Schengen showdown: Romania, Bulgaria & the Netherlands

Romania and Bulgaria remain outside the Schengen Area. That’s in large part due to widespread opposition to them joining. For instance, the Dutch Parliament adopted a resolution urging the government to oppose Romania and Bulgaria’s accession to the Schengen agreement. The approved motion recommended more checks on the rule of law, corruption, and organized crime before allowing either country to join the convention.¹

However, that resolution was little more than a desperate last attempt to prevent freedom of movement for Romanians and Bulgarians within the European Union, based more on bad politics than on the facts of the matter.

To understand this, it is important to begin with the basics, such as the meaning of ‘Schengen.’ It is an agreement set up in 1985 in the European Community (which later became the European Union) that enables people, goods, and services to travel without any internal border controls. The protocol thus honors the enshrined right to move freely across the EU.

For an ordinary European, Schengen means being able to travel from Hungary all the way to Spain without having to show a passport or declare any goods, and without having to confront the fear and hassle of borders.

Unsurprisingly, then, being technically eligible to be part of the agreement has nothing to do with a perfect track record on corruption and legislation. Rather, it is about tasks that guarantee internal security within the EU, like securing airspace boundaries, setting up a continent-wide police cooperation program, complying with European data protection laws, creating a uniform visa regime across the Union, and so on.

Romania and Bulgaria fulfill all criteria for accession. Both countries have been part of the Common Verification Mechanism since 2007, which aims to (among other things) weed out corruption among border guards. They have also undertaken massive campaigns to prevent bribes, kickbacks, and goods smuggling on their borders. They even bought state-of-the-art detectors to place at vulnerable points of entry (the port of Constanta, for instance).

As such, both countries were given the green light to join Schengen by the EU Commission and Parliament as far back as 2011.² Not to mention that Romania and Bulgaria have already passed the ultimate stress test of Schengen-worthiness with flying colors. Throughout the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they have guided millions of Ukrainian refugees to safety while working to prevent criminals from taking advantage of vulnerable people fleeing a war zone.³

Far from some rigorous commitment to impartiality before the law, the Dutch decision should be seen as what it is: internal political games among a deeply divided Parliament and ruling coalition. Former Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte continues to walk a fine line, needing to appease conservative Eurosceptic hardliners in his government (like the Christian Union Party) while simultaneously keeping moderates calm. Ongoing political chaos in the Netherlands is unlikely to calm things down.

It is thus in the interest of some Dutch politicians to stoke fears that corrupt criminal migrants from Romania and Bulgaria are coming to change the Dutch way of life forever. That is, unless any newcomers can be kept out of Schengen.

Back in reality, both countries are about as corrupt as two states that are part of the Schengen agreement, namely, Greece and Hungary. And Bulgarians and Romanians are a negligible presence in Dutch demographics.

The move isn’t only irrational, though. It is proving politically destabilizing. The decision caused internal headaches for Rutte, leading to a row with a member of his own governing coalition, the socially liberal D66 party. D66 came out strongly in favor of Romania and Bulgaria’s accession. One of their MEPs, Sophie int’ Veld, went so far as to say at the time that she is publicly ashamed of the way her own government is behaving and felt the need to excuse her domestic Parliament’s resolution.⁴

The entire scheme also left the Netherlands in a really awkward position relative to the rest of the EU. After all, it is the only state out of 27 that has said no to the Schengen enlargement proposal. The Dutch hence risk breaking the image of European unity at a time when solidarity is needed more than ever.

The consequences of excluding Romania and Bulgaria go beyond symbolism—they undermine the credibility of the EU's institutional processes and create a dangerous precedent where political convenience overrides legal benchmarks. By continuing to delay accession, the EU risks alienating two committed member states and eroding trust in its core principles of fairness and unity.

Enough is enough. Dutch politicians should stop engaging in internal shenanigans, accept the facts of the matter, and give Romanians and Bulgarians what they have earned and is theirs by right.

This article was written by Emil Panzaru. Emil is a writer and the research manager at the Consumer Choice Center. He splits his time between Romania, where he grew up, and the UK, where he earned his PhD in Political Economy and Research from King's College London.