Bulgaria and Romania will be part of the Schengen area very soon, this is the general trend and it is quite clear, German foreign ministry state secretary Werner Hoyer told journalists in Berlin on March 23 2011.

The two countries have made efforts to comply with the Schengen requirements and have the ambition to meet all the criteria by the end of the Hungarian EU presidency in June 2011, but there are still doubts whether this will happen within the deadlines, he said.

Hoyer said that Bulgaria should focus on the control of its Turkish border, while Romania needed to pay attention to rooting out endemic corruption.

"I expect the European Commission to publish its report in June and according to the draft text, it will be positive. I therefore hope that by the end of 2011 there will be an outcome, no matter whether the accession will take place at once or in stages," Hoyer said.

Both the European Commission and Berlin were aware that these countries have made considerable investments to enter the Schengen area, he said.

Article is provided by and used with the permission of sofiaecho.com, Bulgaria's national English-language newspaper.