After the backlash they got after opening up the borders with Bulgaria and especially Romania it would be political suicide to open up for Albania.

Albania maybe but Noth Macedonia? 2.1M people. The EU took more refugees from the Middle East than there are N. Macedonians. The Republic of Serbia has signed a free trade agreement with the Eurasian Union (Russia's version of the EU).

Why was the backlash for Romania greater than the one for Bulgaria?

Not GP but in Spain we have ton of Romanians, and it’s one of the most popular “blame the immigrant” targets. You can see how that becomes a political problem.

(I don’t agree with those views, I’ve been to the country a couple times and I think the culture and the people are beautiful)

I'm not really picking sides here, but the roaming gangs are really visible compared to regular Eastern European immigrants. There's just this watershed moment when the Romanian borders opened where all of a sudden you started noticing them, while the influx of for example Poles was much more gradual and consisted of mostly people that came with the idea at least to work.

I know that Romanian criminals, from petty to violent and organized, have been a thing in Spain since I was a kid, well before their entry into the EU.

That being said, what I saw in fact after their adhesion was that the quality of immigration seemed to improve (at least from what _I_ could see). Good number of honest and sometimes very well-educated people in services.

I guess the question to ask respective to their adhesion is whether the total amount or proportion of Romanian-origined criminality increased.

Roma or Romanian? It's also hard to tell what time you had your childhood.

Romania is 5-6 times bigger.

Just about 3 times as population and migration.

Romania is bigger

Pickpoketing was already rampant in certain big European cities without the Eastern Europeans.