"Following the Council conclusions of June 2011, according to which both Bulgaria and Romania fulfill the criteria necessary to fully apply the Schengen acquis have been implemented that will facilitate the accession. However, the Council could not decide the elimination of internal border controls with these states. The Commission continues to support Romania and Bulgaria's Schengen accession as well as and the Presidency’s efforts in this direction, " the report said, according to Mediafax.
This report covers the period from November 1st, 2012 to April 30th 2013 and shall, in particular, asses the application of the Schengen rules, procedures for issuing visas, the security and the status at the external borders of the Schengen area, the EC said in a statement.
The application of Schengen rules
During the 6 month period covered in the report, controls at internal borders have been reintroduced once by Norway, on the occasion of the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo (10 December 2012). From 3 until 12 December 2012, 3 136 persons were checked, 19 were refused entry and 8 were apprehended.
Verifications of the correct application of the rules have been carried out through spot checks in several participating States (via the Schengen evaluation mechanism) regarding: police cooperation (in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), air borders (in Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic), land borders (in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and visa (in Estonia, Poland and Slovakia). These evaluations have not shown the type of deficiencies that would require immediate action by the Commission.
Visa issuance and security procedures
The Visa Information System (VIS) is currently operational in five regions, having most recently been launched in West Africa and Central Africa (March 2013). It will soon start operations in East Africa and South Africa (6 June 2013), in South America (5 September 2013), as well as in Central Asia, South-East Asia and Palestine (14 November 2013).
The VIS is working well and by 6 May 2013, the system had processed around 2,9 million visa applications, issued around 2,4 million and refused some 348 000 visas requests.
On 9 April 2013 the second generation Schengen Information System (SIS II) successfully entered into operation.
The situation at the external Schengen borders
From October to December 2012, approximately 13 600 irregular border crossings were detected, which is a 52% reduction compared to the fourth quarter of 2011. Greece registered progress by reporting more than half of all detections of irregular border crossing from July-September 2012, this situation changed in August 2012, after the Shield operation was launched, when Greece redeployed around 1.800 border guards at its land border with Turkey. From October-December 2012, Italy reported 31% of all detections (4 231 persons), followed by Greece, reporting 30% of the detections (4 035 persons).
Efforts will continue to improve the information gathering on migration flows within the Schengen area, with a view to launching a regular data collection and analysis of irregular migratory movements in 2014.
The Schengen area of free movement allows more than 400 million EU citizens from 26 European countries and an increasing number of non-EU citizens, to travel without internal border controls.
