site.btaUPDATED MEP Elena Yoncheva Comments Ursula von der Leyen's Re-Election, Bulgaria's Schengen Accession, Future Goals

MEP Yelena Yoncheva (Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF)/Renew Europe) commented for BTA Thursday's re-election of Ursula von der Leyen as head of the European Commission and her future work in the European Parliament. Yoncheva also discussed other issues on the European and Bulgarian agenda, including this country's Schengen accession as part of her future work in the European Parliament (EP), the rift within the MRF and her future goals as MEP, among others.

What is your assessment of Ursula von der Leyen's programme that we heard today?

Elena Yoncheva: What we have heard today from Mrs Von der Leyen is indeed a very ambitious programme. The question is how it will be implemented. And these were the questions that we discussed in our political group as well, because promises [...] and basic intentions that are packaged well verbally are one thing, but implementation in practice is another, and that is why I spoke to her a little while ago long enough to ask her for an additional meeting, which she promised, to talk about the issue of Schengen, because you know, Bulgaria deserves to be part of Schengen for a long time, but the Commission does not seem to be making enough effort. Or she could make even more of an effort to make it happen. Indeed, our Schengen accession is up to the European Council, up to the Member States, but it is still the Commission that has the necessary instruments and opportunities to influence all the Member States, including Austria.

And this does not seem to be being done because we see that different mechanisms are being applied by the Commission to other countries on other issues, and these mechanisms are not being applied to countries such as Austria, which are stopping us for Schengen, and in fact this is what I spoke about today with Mrs Von der Leyen, of course, very briefly, and she promised an additional meeting where we can now discuss directly concrete proposals and see how we can work together on this topic.

What are your goals for your new term in office in the EP?

The goals I am setting myself are the goals that I thought I worked on successfully last term. Fortunately for me, I have this experience that I have gained, which allows me to very quickly get involved in the work of the European Parliament and, at the same time, to state my intentions to continue on these topics. There is the migration pact, that is to say, how to reduce the illegal traffic that also passes through Bulgaria.

As you know, I was presiding over the group that negotiated the migration pact. It is a whole package of legislation. I led the negotiations between Parliament, the committee and the council, and this pact was adopted after almost ten years of negotiations. As a result of these negotiations, which ended successfully, Dublin was dropped, so this work was in Bulgaria's favour.

Now, however, the main battle in this Parliament during the new term will be how this migration pact will be implemented, because here is the most complicated thing, here is the key. Its implementation will begin in two years' time. In that time, the necessary conditions, teams, experts and technical conditions must be created for this migration pact to come into operation.

Will there be a continuation of the work of the subcommittee that has been monitoring the rule of law in the country?

We do not know yet whether there will be such a subcommittee, but in any case I will be active in LIBE as a full member, which is indeed a great responsibility and honour. Regardless of what this subcommittee will be called, whether it will continue to exist as a monitoring group or not, we will continue to work on these issues. Another topic that I have been working on, you know, during [the EP's] last term, I was the rapporteur on the Media Act regulation and, as a result, actually the proposal that our team made that media content, for example, from various social platforms cannot be taken down. And that was also a complicated battle because not everybody agreed and that is in favour of journalism, not only Bulgarian journalism. Now we have to work, to see how this is going to be implemented, because it is one thing to pass legislation and nice words, but it's another thing how it is going to be implemented, because this regulation talks about the fact that there has to be transparency of the financing of media ownership, that there has to be real protection of journalists from surveillance, from censorship. There are concrete steps that need to be followed.

You are in a different political group this term. What is that you need to change in your political behaviour?

Actually, there is nothing I need to change in my political behaviour, because a condition I had set was to be able to continue working on the issues I had started, where they already know me here and I have the relevant reputation. To be known is most important, so you can be trusted to work on certain legislation. This is how this European Parliament is working. The biggest investment is building trust among colleagues, so they know how you work, how you think, so they can trust you. In that sense, I will continue working on the issues I mentioned, but there is one I would like to mention – you know there are three European citizens who have been in Yemen for over nine months now, one of whom is a Bulgarian, and they’re not talked about. You should ask the MEPs and see how many know about this. Many of the colleagues I talked with said that if these were citizens of France, Germany or another big European country, all MEPs would have been aware of this. That is why I tried to draft a special resolution, I talked with Mr Borrell and his team on a few occasions, we had a series of meetings, so that this mechanism can be put into action. If something is forgotten, the necessary efforts will not be made.

What will be the outcome in the MRF?

The MRF is a party that actually - and this is not a cliché - managed to preserve ethnic peace in Bulgaria. It is a Bulgarian party, and I am a Bulgarian MEP, which defends issues that are important for Bulgaria as a member state of the European Union. And the MRF will be strong, both in Bulgaria and here, because it is part of a very important political family. It will be strong if united. And I hope the strength and will are found to overcome all this opposition that we have seen recently.