It is almost impossible to prove or disprove the existence of ulterior motives behind the Dutch position on Romania’s membership of Schengen.
What can be evaluated is the claim that Constanta could affect or endanger Rotterdam’s leading position among European ports, however.
Not in the same area – or same league
Dorin Popescu, president of Black Sea House, a Constanta-based institute of geopolitical and economic analysis, said he doubted that the work and prospects of Rotterdam and Constanta are very interconnected.
“I am firmly convinced that there would not be negative effects, either political nor economic, for the port of Rotterdam if Romania joined Schengen,” he said.
Speaking in a telephone interview, the university professor and former diplomat explained that the two ports “are not in direct competition, don’t work with the same routes and don’t service the same kinds of freight”.
Marek Dabrowski, a non-resident scholar at the Bruegel economic think tank in Brussels, is of the same opinion.
“A very superficial look at the existing statistics provides an unquestionable answer, that Constanta cannot be considered as a potential competitor to Rotterdam,” he said.
Dabrowski highlights that the two ports are not even in the same league. “Rotterdam is the largest EU seaport with a maritime freight service more than twice higher than the second one [Antwerp]”, he said, while “Constanta is beyond the top 20 EU seaports, serving maritime freight that is more than 10 times less than Rotterdam”.
He also stressed the different geographical positions of the two ports. On the Black Sea, he said, the Romanian port “has a peripheral importance for the EU economy, far from the major business centers of the EU”.
It has no “chance to compete with Rotterdam,” he added, “with its direct access to the North Sea and Atlantic routes and close distance to major centers of EU economic activity”.
Constanta is also connected to Romania’s western EU border with Hungary by unreliable railroad infrastructure, he noted.
Road transportation connections are no better, he added. The city of Pitesti, in the southern half of Romania, some 500 kilometres from Hungary, is the furthest that trucks can travel uninterruptedly by highway from the Black Sea port.
Dabrowski also pointed out that joining Schengen would not have much impact on Romanian trade.
Free movement of goods, “especially such as containers or mass products (oil, coal, etc.), is already granted for Romania as a member of the EU and its customs union,” he noted.
Joining Schengen, he concluded, “would not have a major impact for Romania, commercially speaking”.
