Bulgaria: Austria can't put limits on entry in Schengen

(ANSA) - SOFIA, DEC 12 - Media recorded reactions in Sofia to a potential gradual withdrawal of Austria's veto on Bulgaria's accession to Schengen if Sofia agrees to changes at the level of air borders.
    "I can imagine changes at the airport level for Bulgaria and Romania," said Interior Minister Austrian Gerhard Karner. He added, however, that it should be necessary to meet certain 'conditions,' such as strengthening the protection of the external borders of the EU, intensifying land border controls, and ensuring better management of asylum seekers.
    The media in Sofia underlined that with this last condition, Karner would ask Bulgaria to take in Afghan and Syrian migrants expelled from Austria. "Bulgaria should join the Schengen area in its own right, including on land and sea, as it has fulfilled all the requirements," commented Bulgarian Parliament Speaker Rossen Zhelyazkov. "An EU country like Austria cannot afford to impose conditions, without having a mandate from the EU Commission or all EU countries, conditions that go beyond meeting the criteria for Schengen membership,'" he added. Premier Nikolay Denkov of Bulgaria called Karner's words "a step in the right direction." "We will not, however, accept any special conditions for entering the Schengen area," Denkov pointed out. "They are throwing crumbs to us, and it is a contemptuous and humiliating attitude for Bulgaria, which is a country EU in its own right," he commented before reporters Korneila Ninova, the leader of the Socialist Party (BSP), the main opposition party. (ANSA).