The European Commission today criticised Romania and Bulgaria for persistently poor results in tackling corruption among top officials and called for more progress in judicial reforms.
Bulgaria and Romania, the latest countries to join the European Union in 2007, are subject to monitoring of their efforts to weed out widespread graft and, in the case of Bulgaria, to combat organised crime.
The Commission made a special case of the two countries to address criticism that neither met the standards required to join the EU and fears that other Balkan states wanting to join will also fail to crack down on corruption.
The executive arm of the 27-nation EU said new reform initiatives in Bulgaria needed to be extended and implemented to show concrete and significant results.
It criticised poor results in tackling high level corruption as well as organised crime, and warned that continued street killings and a failure to apprehend known criminals were undermining Bulgaria's efforts.
"Reforms recommended by the Commission in July 2009 should become a matter of national priority and must be launched in more areas to achieve a profound reform of the judiciary," the Commission said in a statement.
A failure to show results by July may threaten Bulgaria's access to some of the €11 billion promised to the bloc's poorest nation until 2013. In 2008, the Commission froze millions of euros in EU infrastructure and farm aid to Bulgaria due to failures to crack down on graft.
Tough-talking prime minister Boiko Borisov, whose centre-right Gerb came to power last July on promises to end a climate of impunity, has raised pressure on the judiciary to clean itself up in a bid to harness public support for radical changes.
"The report points out that ... for the first time Bulgaria shows clear and explicit political will for reforms," justice minister Margarita Popova told Bulgarian national radio. "The things that are happening in the justice system do not satisfy the public as well as our (EU) partners."
On Romania, the Commission said Bucharest should intensify efforts to adopt criminal and civil procedure codes, noting that the pace of reform was slacking compared with mid 2009.
It urged political groups to work with the judiciary to adopt draft criminal and civil procedure codes swiftly.
Despite the criticism, the Commission said it would continue to work with both countries before its next in-depth report.
Reuters