Croatia to be technically ready for Schengen area by year end: minister

Croatia would meet the technical criteria to enter the Schengen Area by the end of the year, Croatian Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic said on Friday, state news agency HINA reported.

The minister met here on Friday with the European Commissioner for the Security Union, Julian King, who said that Croatia had done an excellent job in implementing the European directive on the use of passenger name record (PNR) data for the prevention and detection of terrorist offenses and serious crime.

The Interior Minister told reporters that Schengen Information System had shown great results. In the last seven months, Croatia has recorded almost 170 million views and 8,000 suspicious vehicles and people have been identified. The European directive, he noted, should be passed by Croatian parliament in the next two weeks.

Entering the Schengen Area is one of the goals of the Croatian government. In January, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said before the parliament that Croatia aimed to meet the technical criteria to join the area in 2019.

The Schengen Area includes 26 European states that have no passport and border control at their mutual borders. Croatia is one of the four EU countries that are still not part of the area, others being Bulgaria, Cyprus and Romania.