The procedures, leading to Romania joining the Schengen Zone March 2011, are going smoothly, Romanian President Traian Basescu declared.

This was stated as an answer to France's Minister for European Affairs, Pierre Lellouche who announced that France will make sure that the EU decision on the Romanian and Bulgarian entry in the Schengen Area is not made before the summer.

In the French minister's words, the expansion of the Schengen Zone should not be an automatic result from the process of technical evaluation of the candidate's progress, which has been running for two years.

"The Romanian-Moldavian border is still a source of trouble, since Romanian passes are being handed out to non-Romanians, and because Transnistria region in Moldova," Lellouche clarified.

Lellouche said that France supports the Netherlands, which has called for postponement of the decision on Romania and Bulgaria's Schengen accession at least until the release of the annual reports on the two countries by the European Commission in the summer of 2011 under the so called Cooperation and Verification Mechanism designed for monitoring the post-EU accession progress of the two countries that joined the Union in 2007.

Romanian President Basescu stated, though, that he is optimistic about his country' s chances to join Schengen as early as spring 2011. He is certain that the "older" EU member states will support Romania on her way to access the Schengen Agreement.

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