Romania and Bulgaria join the Schengen area

In two days' time, Romania and Bulgaria will join the EU's Schengen area of free movement.

For Romanians, border checks with Hungary and Bulgaria will be suspended.

There will, however, be a transitional period of six months during which the border police will carry out random checks and may stop some vehicles for checks.

But this is for a minor proportion of the total number of people crossing the borders.

Romania has about 17 border points with Hungary and 14 with Bulgaria. We are talking about road, rail and river, through which some 28 million people have crossed in 2024.

Also in 2024, as in previous years, all these people were stopped and had their documents checked, and the waiting time ranged from about 10 minutes to several hours at certain busy times.

With 2025, these checks will be discontinued.

The premise is to smooth traffic flow and save time and money, because standing in queues for hours also means extra fuel consumption.

However, for a period of six months, i.e. until June 30, 2025, there will be a transitional period during which border checks will no longer be the rule but the exception.

These are called random checks, or they are checks that the border police carry out following information about possible crimes.

According to the authorities, these checks can be carried out on up to five percent of vehicles crossing the border. But equally, authorities say, there may be days when no one is stopped.

After these six months, spot checks will be suspended.

But that does not mean there can be no more checks at certain times.

Even today, within the Schengen area, some countries like Germany, the Netherlands and France have reintroduced random checks for periods of several months on certain borders to prevent phenomena such as migration.

Translated by: Radu Matei