Bulgaria threatens EU cooperation over Schengen snub

(SOFIA) - Bulgaria threatened Saturday to make European Union decision-making more difficult after having its entry into the passport-free Schengen travel area blocked.

The Netherlands and Finland blackballed Bulgaria and Romania at a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Thursday, alleging poor progress in the fight against corruption and organised crime.

"Bulgaria is ... a member state of the European Union. We have a stance on every subject discussed in the European Council and there are many policies which cannot be implemented without our cooperation," Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov said on state radio.

In his first reaction to Thursday's decision, Mladenov added, "We must not allow our nationals to be treated like second-class citizens in Europe."

With presidential and municipal elections a month away, the snub is a setback for Boiko Borissov's right-wing government, which has made the fight against corruption and crime a cornerstone of its policy.

Polish Interior Minister Jerzy Miller, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, said after Thursday's talks that Bulgaria and Romania were promised a place in Schengen when they joined the European Union in 2007.

"Today the promise has been broken," he said, adding that Romania and Bulgaria had made "huge progress."

Poland sought to convince EU peers to accept a two-step solution that would allow Romanian and Bulgarian air and sea borders to open by October 31, while a date on opening land borders would be put off to next year.

All nations backed the compromise except for the two opponents, diplomats said.

Schengen is an area stretching from Portugal to Poland through which road, rail and even air travellers need only basic identity papers to move freely. vs/mb/mlr