Vladimir Mitev
An excerpt from this article was used in the Radio Bulgaria article about the most important events in Bulgarian-Romanian and Bulgarian-Greek relations in 2024.
The best thing that happened in Bulgarian-Romanian relations this year is about to take effect after the New Year. It is the 12 December 2024 decision of the EU’s Justice and Home Affairs Council on the two countries’ full accession to the Schengen area.
The decision makes south-eastern Europe part of the EU’s area of free movement of people and goods on an equal footing with all other members. This means truck drivers will no longer have to wait unnecessarily long at borders, wasting money and polluting the environment. In addition, the two countries will not be discriminated against because of their previously different Schengen status when foreign investors look for a place for their factories in the region.
The decision could also transform Romanian-Bulgarian relations, especially in border areas. The lack of a border would allow Bucharest to be reached from Ruse in little more than an hour. This will encourage tourist travel between Bulgaria and Romania. And it will create conditions for more intensive contacts between the people of the two countries.
As a result, economic dynamics between the two countries are expected to increase. Easier border crossing and increased interest in border crossing will create conditions for increased trust between Bulgarians and Romanians. And even though some cross-border crime may increase, the interior ministries of the two countries will also increase their level of interaction and trust, as they already manage a free intra-European border.
What needs to follow in order to achieve the transformative effect for bilateral relations is for Bulgarians and Romanians to practice crossing the border between each other – both in the physical sense (along the Danube and in Dobruja) and in terms of the border of our individual and national experience. If we are open to new experiences and are able to draw on such experiences beyond Bulgaria, in our closest cultural neighbor in the EU, Romania, we will be able to add new elements to our identity and experience over time. And this will increase our potential in various senses – existential, intellectual, economic, etc. However, it is important to find in ourselves the potential to renew and energize our experience.
The taking down of border controls between Bulgaria and Romania removes an obstacle for the inhabitants of the two countries and the people who pass through them in their right to travel freely and to have their own initiative in the EU. From now on, the key to change, including the economic revival of the depopulating North Bulgaria, lies in our ability to formulate and implement initiatives with our neighbors, to build social capital in South-East Europe, to be constantly open to new experiences. This chance for something new and something bold is the best thing that happened in 2024 in the Romanian-Bulgarian relations.
While the political crisis continues in Sofia over the inability to form a stable government, and the Romanian political system is also in a difficult moment after the annulment of the presidential elections, the citizens of both countries are more than ever the key to change in regional relations. The easing of border controls can provide an influx of energy and should be used to move the border regions of both countries, as well as the countries themselves, away from their peripheral position. And the bridges with our EU neighbors – again physical, but also interpersonal and virtual – can give more people in our countries the feeling that, despite being at the south-eastern end of the EU, we have experience and follow the logic at its center.
Photo: A virtual Bulgarian-Romanian bridge (source: The Bridge of Friendship via WordPress AI)
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