Romania and Bulgaria are failing to crack down sufficiently on high-level corruption and organised crime, the European Commission said on Wednesday as it pledged to monitor both countries for at least another year.
In a report on the countries' efforts to meet European Union standards on justice and the rule of law, the Commission stopped short of threatening immediate punishment but made clear progress was too slow.
The two countries have been subject to a special review since joining the EU in 2007 because of their poor record on corruption, organised crime and judicial reform. The Commission will reassess their progress in summer 2010, in spite of planning to stop doing so at the end of 2009.
Bulgaria had shown "some new momentum", the Commission said. However it warned these were individual initiatives that had not been "adequately backed up by broad political consensus or a convincing strategy". The fight against crime was "too slow". The Commission stripped Bulgaria of €220m ($313m, £190m) in EU funds last November for failing to tackle corruption, the first time in half a century such action had been taken against a member state.
Boyko Borisov, the country's prime minister-elect, who won elections this month on an anti-corruption ticket, has promised to address the problem. Tsvetan Tsvetanov, chairman of Mr Borisov's Gerb party, on Wednesday said: "It is important to demonstrate political will from day one."
Romania was not doing enough to ensure investigations were swiftly concluded, the report said. "The unequivocal commitment across political parties ... is not there yet."
Catalin Predoiu, Romanian justice minister, on Wednesday night said: "All the parties should support the fight against high-level corruption. While there is broad all-party support, we can always do better."
The report issued 21 recommendations to Bulgaria and 16 to Romania. They included calling on Romania to investigate officials quickly and urging Bulgaria to make it easier to freeze the assets of criminals.
Jana Mittermaier, head of the Brussels office of Transparency International, the anti-corruption watchdog, said: "We are in agreement on the gravity of the problem ... [and] welcome that both countries will be monitored next year."
Bulgaria, the European Union's poorest member-state, is at risk of falling under Russian political and economic influence unless its authorities work more effectively with the EU, according to a panel of EU experts advising the Bulgarian government.
In a report obtained by the Financial Times, the experts said the EU needed to speak to Russia with one voice on security and energy policies, and there was a risk of a rift in the 27-nation bloc if Russian influence grew too strong in Bulgaria and other EU countries once part of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact.
EU-Russian relations have been strained in recent years because of incidents such as the disruption of Russian gas supplies, last August's war between Russia and Georgia and the contest for influence in Ukraine and other former Soviet states.
The panel, set up in November by Bulgaria's former socialist-led government, was asked to recommend ways to help the nation adjust to EU membership and overcome mistrust of Bulgaria in many older, richer EU countries.
The six-member advisory board was chaired by Dominique de Villepin, a former French prime minister, and included Josep Piqué, a former Spanish foreign minister, and António Vitorino, a former EU commissioner for justice and home affairs.
Most of their report concentrated on corruption issues. They urged Bulgaria to take action, saying high-level officials under serious suspicion should be dismissed without waiting for judicial proceedings.
In their report, prepared before the election victory this month of a new centre-right party, Gerb (Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria), the experts said: "Bulgaria should build, according to its national public interest, a European agenda backed by the expertise and the active support of European institutions . . .
"If Bulgaria fails in the fulfilment of this objective, different consequences could arise. First, the Bulgarian state could become more vulnerable, encouraging populist movements and planting the seeds of discouragement among Bulgarian civil society.
"Second, the efforts undertaken to build up a stronger, more modern and efficient state apparatus could weaken, and so would the trust of the people in the state. Finally, it could undo the ties between the EU and Bulgaria, prompting a shift of Bulgaria towards Russian political and economic interests."
The European Commission stripped Bulgaria of €220m ($313m, £190m) in EU funds in November for failing to tackle corruption, the first time in half a century such action had been taken against a member state.
The Commission is due this week to publish a report on progress made by Bulgaria and Romania, which both joined the EU in 2007, in fighting corruption.
Boyko Borisov, Bulgaria's premier-elect, has vowed to imprison anyone involved in embezzling EU funds.
Revenues from foreign tourism in Bulgaria this year will be 25 per cent less than last year, according to a new report.
About 20 per cent of hotels in Bulgaria, including those at the seaside, have been closed and 60 per cent of the beds are not booked, according to Roumen Draganov, head of the Institute for Analysis and Assessment of Tourism.
In 2008, Bulgaria got 2.4 billion euro from foreign tourism, Draganov said, and this year the projected figure was 1.9 billion euro.
The reasons behind the decline were lower visitor numbers, resistance to high prices, inefficient use by the industry of human resources, and inefficiency in investments.
In turn, the low rate of bookings was making it difficulty to hotels to repay loans, Bulgarian news agency Focus quoted Draganov as saying.
"That is why in the peak of the season some hotels stay closed and they will stay closed for the whole summer," Draganov said.
Two traffic police officers were caught red-handed, accepting a bribe from a Romanian citizen. They were apprehended by a mobile unit of Interior Security and subsequently driven to the municipal directorate in the northeastern city of Rousse, Dnevnik daily has reported.
A Romanian driver was stopped for a traffic offence whereupon he handed euro to the policemen. The amount was duly pocketed, without an official sanction being issued. The exact amount involved is undisclosed, but the culprits were spotted by a police unit in an unmarked vehicle.
The scene occurred on the main road leading from Rousse to Byala. The driver of the Opel Astra, who had Romanian registration, had overtaken a vehicle at a forbidden section of the road. After what reportedly was described a "brief verbal conversation, euro were exchanged".
A case has been opened under the penal codex, chapter 283 article 3.
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