PM Berlusconi: we sustain Romania’s adhesion to Schengen / I have a great admiration to the Romanian government’s courage to take austerity measures

We sustain Romania’s adhesion to Schengen if it will happen this year, Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi said after a meeting with his Romanian counterpart Emil Boc. He said that Italy is on Romania’s part for it to become a 100% EU member.

He said that Romanians working in Italy are highly regarded and the problems two years ago are of the past. Today we are talking about 1,200,000 citizens working in Italy. Boc hopes that the labor market will be liberalized soon. We hope to have the last restrictions regarding Romanian citizens working in Italy so that Romanian citizens can benefit from the same rights as the other European citizens, PM Boc said.

He said the Romanian workers have restrictions for about 40% of the sectors on the Italian labour market but this will be liberalized in the upcoming period. Italian PM expressed his admiration for the austerity measures taken b y the Romanian government. He confessed that in Italy he did not have the courage to do the same as his Romanian counterpart.

It takes a lot of courage to overcome these decisions and I wish that your people understands that these were indispensable measures, Berlusconi added. He expressed his admiration for the government’s courage and his hope that the economy will soon recover and that the population will understand that they have an excellent PM who had the interest of the people in his mind all this time.