Bulgaria and Romania will join the Schengen border-free area for air and sea travel as of March 2024, Bulgarian Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov said on December 28.

Earlier in December, the Netherlands lifted its veto on Bulgaria’s entry to Schengen, while Austria signalled it would be willing to allow air and sea entry to Schengen for citizens of the two countries without setting any timeframe for whether or when it would agree to their full accession.

Denkov said there was no final official decision on the Schengen air and sea entry of the two countries, and negotiations will continue until the end of March.

“Until this moment, there is no date for accession in Schengen for land borders,” Denkov told a press briefing.

He added that the Netherlands lifted its veto as the parliament in Sofia adopted a set of laws long-awaited by the Netherlands.

Deputy Prime Minister Mariya Gabriel said the government aims to have a clear date for full integration into Schengen by the end of 2024.

Romania also announced that on December 23 an agreement was reached with Austria for air and sea entry in Schengen.

Previously, back in December 2022, Austria vetoed the two countries’ entry to the Schengen border-free area as Vienna claimed that expansion could not be allowed as Schengen was not working properly. At the same time, the Netherlands was pushing Sofia to show results in the fight against corruption and organised crime to lift its veto on Schengen entry.

Austria has since demanded stronger defence of borders, specifically the Bulgarian border with Turkey and the Romanian border with Serbia.

The Romanian interior ministry said in a statement that applying Schengen rules to Romania’s land border would be tightly connected to the “compensatory measures regarding the strengthening of border control and the application of the Dublin Agreement”.

Denkov also confirmed the opening of land borders will be combined with significant support from the European Commission for the protection of the EU’s external borders that should lower the number of illegal migrants to Europe.

Negotiations on full accession should continue through 2024. According to Romanian daily Adevarul, the two countries could be fully integrated in the Schengen area in 2025.

However, despite optimistic expectations on the part of the Bulgarian and Romanian authorities, on December 29 Austria's Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said the two countries will not be allowed to join the air and sea Schengen zone unless they accept migrants from Afghanistan and Syria.

"The air Schengen will be put in place when the necessary conditions are fulfilled and firmly established. This means that the deployment of troops at the EU's external borders will be significantly increased, especially in Bulgaria, in Turkey, but also in Romania and Serbia, and land borders will continue to be controlled, especially between Romania and Bulgaria. In addition, the two countries should accept asylum seekers, especially from Afghanistan and Syria — these are the clear conditions and the position we have agreed, including the three countries," he said.

Hungary has been also threatening to block Bulgaria’s entry to Schengen, after Sofia imposed a tax on transport of Russian oil. To avoid that, Bulgaria withdrew the tax.