Romania was not, is not and will not be a country that generates migration or allows uncontrolled migration, declared President Klaus Iohannis, who is on an official visit to Latvia, according to Agerpres.

„I have also heard that the Austrian side came with some data that, in our opinion, must be very carefully verified. I repeat, there was not, there is not and there will not be an uncontrolled migratory flow through Romania,” said the head of state, after the meeting with his Latvian counterpart, Egils Levits.

He pointed out that Romania knows where the migrants come from and where they slip through and these things will also be explained to the Austrian side in discussions between experts.

„The fact remains that these migrants, who create concerns that we can understand, concerns in Austria, do not come through Romania and not from Romania. The Balkan route is problematic, we know this and we, in Romania, have taken all the measures. Romania is not part of the Balkan route of uncontrolled migration. We know the route the migrants take, we can explain to the Austrian side, we can help them. So Romania has the potential, it has the ability to come to the support of the Austrians to slow down this influx,” explained president Iohannis.

The head of state specified that, in order to clarify these things, he agreed with the Minister of Internal Affairs, Lucian Bode, for the latter to go to Vienna, to have technical, specific meetings with his counterpart, with other politicians.

Klaus Iohannis said that Romania’s accession to Schengen would make the free movement space safer, showing that our country has proven this.

„We have an external border, an external border of the Union, with Ukraine, with Moldova, and with Bulgaria, there is also an external border with Serbia. All these borders are managed correctly and were checked just in the past weeks. These matters must be explained once more. Our centers can be visited, the places where check are conducted, they can all be verified, we are absolutely open, but what we don’t want is for them to talk about us without us. We have all the data, we have all the answers and we are ready to help everyone,” the president said.

He emphasized that Romania has been preparing for 11 years to become part of the Schengen Area.

„As you probably know, there have been several requests in the European space that referred to us, to Romania, when we were talking about Schengen. One, and probably the most important, was for the CVM [the Co-operation and Verification Mechanism] process to be finished, lifted, completed, something that, you surely remember, happened yesterday, when the European Commission decided that the CVM has been completed and there will be no further verification under the CVM, because Romania has reached all the objectives, fulfilled all the benchmarks,” said Iohannis.

The Romanian president recalled that Romania invited over the countries that wanted to further verify whether it is ready to join Schengen, pointing out that there were two evaluation missions that produced positive reports.

Agerpres