Romania will become a member of the borderless Schengen Area by the end of the current mandate of the European Commission, which is set to expire in October 2019. At least, this is what the European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker indicated after a meeting with the Romanian PM Viorica Dancila.

The duo met in Brussels, in which occasion they discussed the relations of the European Union with Romania, including the latter’s accession into the Schengen Area.

“I remain convinced that before the end of my term we will receive Romania as a new member of the Schengen Area. There are still efforts to be made, but we will get this result,” the EC President Juncker told to journalists, following his meeting with Primer Dancila.

President Juncker also asserted that Romania is a key-member of the EU, expressing his belief that the country is well prepared to take over the presidency of the EU Council.

“Without Romania, the EU would not be complete. Today it is complete because, after decades of artificial separation, it is part of the European family and is anchored forever in this family,” Juncker said.

Romania is among the only four EU countries that are still not part of the Schengen, alongside Bulgaria, Croatia and Cyprus. It joined the European Union in 2007, but the process to join the Schengen area is still not over.

President Jean Claude Juncker and other officials of the EU have often called on the accession of Romania to the Schengen Zone, concluding the country has completed all of the requirements set.

Last year in his annual speech about the situation of the EU, Juncker called for immediate accession of Romania to the Schengen visa-free travel zone. Whereas in May this year, the European Parliament urged the European Council to admit Romania to the Schengen zone, after its accession was postponed for 2018, in November last year.

Only last month, the members of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs of the European Parliament voted in favor of a call to the European Union ministers to take an affirmative decision in the accession of Romania to the border check-free Schengen area.