There is no reason to delay beyond March 2011 the entry of Bulgaria and Romania in the Schengen area, according to Bulgarian Deputy Interior Minister Kalin Slavov and Trifan Florea-Tiberiu, Romania's State Secretary and Director of the Interior Ministry's Directorate General for Schengen, BTA reported. The two held a news conference after expert-level talks held ahead of upcoming inspections on compliance with the Schengen requirements.

It emerged at their news conference on Tuesday that several thematic checks of the two nations' readiness for accession to Schengen are due in 2009 in the areas of police cooperation, personal data protection, maritime border protection and visa issue.

At the Rousse talks the two sides coordinated the work that needs to be done to prepare for the checks.

The Romanian official said that his country has already started issuing passports with biometric data in a pilot project in Bucharest and plans to introduce them nation-wide in the next six months. In Bulgaria, February 28 is the deadline for selecting a company that will produce the passports with the biometric data, Savov said.

The Bulgarian Deputy Interior Minister also said that two Bulgarian-Romanian agreements will be prepared shortly. In the area of police cooperation, the two sides will agree on the transformation of the existing Giurgiu border police liaison office into a coordination center for data exchange, and will determine the rules for operation in the future zone for trans-border police control.

Once Bulgaria and Romania join the Schengen zone, border checkpoints will be removed but a border control zone will be set out - varying between 15 and 35 km from country to country - where police can do checks and pursue fugitives in the territory of the other counrty, the Romanian State Secretary explained.

Savov said that Bulgaria will absorb 130 million euro in 2010 and 2011 for projects aimed to prepare its entry in the Schengen area.