Janos Balogh, the chief of Hungary’s National Police, said lifting checks at the border was “a historic moment”.
Law enforcement officials from Hungary and Romania met at the Csanádpalota border crossing to open the barrier between the two countries in a formal ceremony that marked Romania’s accession with the EU Schengen area at midnight.
During the ceremony, János Balogh, the chief of Hungary’s National Police, said lifting checks at the border was “a historic moment”. “We have been waiting for it very much and for a long time,” he said, according to the police.hu website.
“As of midnight, crossing the Hungarian-Romanian border will be a lot easier,” the police chief said, expressing hope that this would boost cultural and economic ties and “would bring the two countries even closer to one another”.
Meanwhile, addressing another formal border-opening event at the Pocsaj-Biharkeresztes crossing point, Levente Magyar, state secretary at the Hungarian foreign ministry, said that “Romania’s Schengen accession has brought for Hungary important national satisfaction”, pointing out the scrapping of controls at the border that “separated millions of Hungarians from one another”. “But what we have done is also for our Romanian friends,” he said.
“The gift of free movement has been given in the first place to those hundreds of thousands of people who had suffered the border’s existence, those living on the two sides of it,” he said.
