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Brussels Plans Strict Conditions for Bulgaria’s Membership

21 09 2006  While Bulgaria will join the EU in 2007 as expected, sanctions are at the ready should pace of reforms slacken.

By Gjeraqina Tuhina in Brussels (Balkan Insight, 21 Sept 06)

The European Commission is likely to give the green light for Bulgaria to join the European Union next year.

But the country will join under the strictest conditions yet applied to any new member.

The Commission is set to deliver its verdict on September 26 as to whether Bulgaria should join the European club in January, as Sofia expects, or wait another year to complete preparations.

EU officials have not divulged the contents of the report but indicate it will be positive and that the country will be allowed to become a full member on January 1.

At a European summit in 2004, the current members’ heads of state and government said Bulgaria and Romania should join the EU in 2007 but that membership might be delayed until January 2008 if they failed to speed up reforms.

Most EU officials believe Bulgaria has performed more poorly in this field than Romania over such key issues as justice, organised crime and corruption.

In May, the EC set an October deadline for Sofia to meet the minimum benchmarks or face postponement of accession.

However, the European commissioner for industry, Guenter Verheugen, one of the architects of European enlargement, last week said the threat to delay membership was receding.

“The decision-making process has been completed. Bulgaria and Romania will join on January 1,” Verheugen told reporters in Dusseldorf.

However, EU sources make it clear Bulgaria will come under particularly tough scrutiny during its first couple of years in the club.

They have said legal and financial sanctions may be imposed if Sofia fails to tackle organised crime and high-level corruption.

The EU has gone ahead with the 2007 deadline, sources told Balkan Insight, because it fears that delaying the timetable to 2008 would simply give Sofia and Bucharest more time to postpone action on reforms.

By allowing them in next year, it hopes to strengthen Europe’s leverage in the form of "safeguards" that could be used to suspend membership benefits.

The European Commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso, is publicly cautious in his predictions about the content of September’s report but has confirmed that safeguard measures, in Bulgaria’s case, are likely.

“If Bulgaria were to join the Union from 1 January 2007 we believe that accompanying measures would be highly likely in certain areas,” Barroso said in early September in Strasbourg.

“A number of accompanying measures will be difficult to avoid,” the EU’s chief executive added. Barroso did not specify which areas would be subject to safeguards, emphasising that the most sensitive issues remained the fight against organised crime and corruption.

Brussels sources say the so-called safeguard clauses might mean the exclusion of Bulgaria from certain policy areas, such as police and judicial cooperation, if it continued to fall short of EU standards.

One other measure being mentioned in EU circles is suspension of European financial aid.

“If Bulgaria fails to tackle crime and corruption it could be excluded from EU legal cooperation and the Union would not recognise its courts’ judgments,” one source said.

The September plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg gave Bulgaria’s prime minister, Sergei Stanishev, a last chance to promote his country’s case before publication of the Commission’s report.

Stanishev said the January 2007 timetable was a “realistic date” for Bulgarian entry.

"On corruption and organised crime, the situation is now definitely much better from the point of European standards and criteria than it used to be," Stanishev said. "I have enough arguments and evidence that they are developing in the right direction."

The Commission thinks differently. Olli Rehn, commissioner for enlargement and the main author of the September report, warned that Sofia was still not in the clear, after a meeting with Stanishev.

“ Bulgaria’s progress has been slower than expected,” he said. “The EU expected more progress in judicial reform and in efforts to curb corruption and organised crime.”

But Commission officials see little to be gained by postponement, although many also believe it was a big mistake to offer Bulgaria EU membership in 2007 in the first place.
“The European Union will not gain anything if it postpones the process for another year because if Bulgaria is not ready to become a member in 2007, it will not be ready even by 2008,” one Commission official confided to Balkan Insight.

 
Gjeraqina Tuhina is the Brussels correspondent of Radio Television Kosovo. Balkan Insight is BIRN`s online publication.