The free movement of Romanian citizens

For tens of years the Communist regime in Romania had been refusing the Romanian citizens the right to travel freely abroad.

Thus, starting in 1989, the freedom of movement - even conditioned on obtaining a visa - became one of the big gains of the anti-Communist revolution.

Then, once Romania joined the EU in 2007, visas were no longer needed for the Romanian citizens who traveled to the EU countries.

However, Romania needs to make one more step towards the Schengen area accession.

In this respect, Romania received assurances of support from the foreign minister of Luxembourg, Jean Asselborn on Wednesday.

We recall that Luxembourg will take over the EU rotating presidency as of July 1st.

Given that Romania meets all technical conditions for the Schengen accession, Jean Asselborn promised that he would try to plead Romania’s cause before France, the Netherlands and Germany, countries that have expressed their reticence in this regard.

All EU states that have complied with Schengen accession criteria 100% and also have a political will should be given the opportunity to join this space, Jean Asselborn also said.

Meanwhile Canada has decided to ease travel conditions for the Romanian citizens.

The Canadian government has decided to include Romania among the states for which the Electronic Travel Authorization (eTA) system will be applied as of 2016.

Thus the Romanian citizens who, over the past ten years, had a Canadian visa or a temporary visa for the USA will be able to enter the Canadian territory without a visa following registration in the eTA system.

This decision, which is an important stage in the process of visa waiver for the Romanian citizens who travel to Canada, reconfirms the constant and consistent dialogue of the Romanian authorities with the Canadian ones, meant to solve this issue, the Romanian Foreign Ministry has shown in a communiqué.

This is also indicative of the common political will of achieving a goal shared by Romania, Canada and the EU.

Talks related to the visa waiver for the Romanians citizens who want to travel to the US are also under way with the American authorities.