A programme of activities to commemorate Malta’s accession to the Schengen area was initiated yesterday morning when President Edward Fenech Adami awarded to Dr Rui Pereira, Portuguese Interior Minister, the Honorary Membership of the National Order of Merit in the grade of Companion with Breast Star.

Last week, Malta reached another of its principal objectives, set when joining the EU in 2004 – that of forming part of the borderless Schengen Area. This enabled Malta to become even more integrated within the European Union through the lifting of the Sea Border last week and the Air Border by the end of March 2008 with the rest of the Member States forming part of the Schengen Treaty.

Accession to the Schengen area is the result of a lot of hard work put in by all principal stakeholders, particularly the Justice and Home Affairs Ministry, including especially the Malta Police Force, and the Foreign Affairs Ministry, who have been involved in the extensive preparations required to ensure that Malta duly complies with the Schengen acquis.

At one time, due to unforeseen circumstances it appeared that accession into Schengen during 2007 was practically impossible and considerable delays for the accession of the new member states were envisaged, the Department of Information said yesterday. However, throughout the present year there have been massive political and technical efforts that enabled the goal to be reached within the originally established timeframes.

For all this, the nine additional EU member states, including Malta, are indebted to Portugal for sustaining the political impetus to reach this goal particularly through the successful development by the Portuguese authorities of the ‘SIS one 4 All’ technical solution that eventually enabled Schengen enlargement as planned.

For this effort, Malta formally recognised the efforts of Portugal, incidentally presently ending a successful term of Presidency of the European Union, by awarding this prestigious honour to Minister Dr Rui Pereira, in gratitude for the assistance given to Malta and to the other Member States joining Schengen on the 21 December.

Zronko Zinrajh, State Secretary of Slovenia, representing the incoming EU Presidency, was also present for these commemorations.