As it happens every year, the Romanians living abroad
are beginning to come home these days to spend their winter holidays with their
families. This is the second Christmas and New Year’s that people will
celebrate under pandemic restrictions.
The new rules for entering Romania, introduced by the
authorities on December 10 to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus
variant, Omicron, are making checkpoints even more crowded than usual. Many Romanians
are not vaccinated and unaware of the new restrictions.
Those who come from outside the EU must present a PCR
test not older than 48 hours. Those who test negative, even if unvaccinated or
not recovered from the disease, will have to isolate for 10 days, while
travellers without a test will have to quarantine for 14 days.
For those who come from the EU, the requirements
include the digital certificate confirming vaccination, recovery from the
disease or a negative PCR test not older than 72 hours. The rules apply for
both Romanian and foreign nationals.
Border police warn that, because people are not aware
of these regulations, at the Nădlac 2 checkpoint on Romania’s western border, in
8 hours as many as 1,400 people were quarantined either for 10 or for 14 days. And
with the quarantine documents requiring time to fill in, the waiting times at
the border are even longer.
In order to avoid crowding, the number of agents and
of lanes has been increased in most border points. But even so, people are
waiting for as long as 2 hours to get into Romania.
And so do lorries and trucks. Customs officers and
border police say their number has been on the rise since mid-November, when fruit
and vegetable imports went up, and the processing capacity stayed the same.
According to border police, these days at the southern
border, with Bulgaria, truck drivers have been waiting for as long as 2 hours, on
the western border, in Borş 2, waiting times are around one hour, and in the
north-east, at the Ukrainian border, the longest waiting time is 2 hours, at
the Siret checkpoint. (tr. A.M. Popescu)
