Romania, Bulgaria belong to Schengen
Liviu Virgil Olos
Founder@Loftrek: Ethical AI Urban Products Distribution Company; Founder@Hotel Marketing Solutions; Values: Integrity, Innovation, Impact
I was quite suprised by the new rejection of EU, I say EU intentionally because even if one man had the power to do this, it shows the weakness of EU to make one man, one nation so powerful to make this possible. It shows the weakness of EU in all decisions that need 100% of votes to happen and there have been cases with several "problem" countries in various types of decisions. This means anyone can strongarm the will of the majority as it also happens in politics when a small party with 5% balances out 2 parties with 45% each...
It's time for EU to change, don't let any one person strongarm one country, one critical decision, one country strongarm the whole block. Ursula von der Leyen has shown the will to fight in many cases. EU will be strong if go beyond personal and country interests sometimes to be a real team. When I say beyond both when some country needs help or some country needs to take a step back in a critical decision.
Politicians come and go, can be radicals from both sides that can push some critical decisions for years. These days we can't afford this anymore, we need to move at light speed, be nimble and strong as a team. It's clear, EU needs some reforms to be able to do this. What happen this year in multiple ocasions should be a warning sign, it's time to upgrade.
Yes, Romania has coruption, coruption scandals and regular citizens fight it. Also western europe has coruption, even at the highest levels as you can see with the recent scandals. There are high level politicians from western Europe sitting on the board of directors or being hired with huge salaries by questionable companies, why is that you think? Greed is everywhere unfortunatelly and some people never seem to have enough ...
For Romanians, let's not beat ourselves so much because of corruption, but do something about it, watch Alex Nedea's TedX: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egtrxX9AsvE&ab_channel=TEDxTalks "Why stay in Romania".
It's also true Romania has all kind of border police coruption scandals. Also if you look on Google for "biggest entry point in Europe for drugs" you will find that they are located in: Belgium (Antwerp), the Netherlands (Rotterdam) and Spain (Valencia and Algeciras) - from a reliable source: https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/publications/eu-drug-markets/cocaine/europe-and-global-cocaine-trade_en border police corruption?
To go further it's like with US visa waiver... Why punish everyone who is a good guy? At the end most of the bad guys find a solution anyway...
I do understand both that there are political power plays, national country financial interests and economic group plays here, let's not kid ourselves.
DP World (Dubai Port) is already preaparing for this accension:
It's a huge money play here. This delay is costing us dearly as a country. We should find ways to fight it, if not by boicoting than by causing a stir and talking about it creating a peer pressure.
We do worth to be in Schengen, it was agreed by Romania's EU accension to be in Schengen after 5 years automatically. By no means I don't think that the border between Romania and Hungary and between Bulgaria and Romania would bring more resilience to the border police, but by having people from the entire Europe rotating in these places.
We have to fight this in any way we see posible and we also need to see the bigger picture.
And yes this is also personal because it hearts my business! The trucks of merchandise that we bring in Romania also spend a lot of time at the borders: Romanian-Hungarian border, Romanian-Buglarian border.
Karl Nehammer, MSc you are hearting a lot of Romanian small business owners that went to Austria for holidays, including me. I do understand that you want make a point about your country problems, but you need to understand that you also create problems for many people that are doing business in your country, visiting your country, bringing revenue to your country. This is not the way to go.
Let's be positive and hopeful that also this issue will bring the exclusion of veto's powers in EU to an end.
What do you think? What action will you take to make this right? What can be done to change this?