Brussels, 18/02/2011 (Agence Europe) - In theory, these are separate issues, but less than a week from their meeting in Brussels, the EU member states' interior ministers, who will be discussing the idea of Bulgaria and Romania joining the Schengen area, will be closely examining the progress reports published by the European Commission on 18 February on the two countries' judicial reforms and fight against corruption.
The two reports are part of the cooperation and verification mechanism (CVM) introduced by the European Commission for Bulgaria and Romania in 2007. The Commission welcomes significant progress but highlights a number of shortcomings. For Romania, for example, it says that little progress has been made in important high-level corruption cases in the courts and the parliament has decided to slash the budget for the National Integrity Agency as part of a wider series of budget cuts. The parliament also put an end to investigations into a former minister.
For Bulgaria, the Commission recommends a root-and-branch overhaul of the judicial system and the police force, calling for Sofia to focus on introducing a proper law for the confiscation of assets and the introduction of an authority to identify and punish conflicts of interest.
On the positive side, the Commission explains that Romania has taken measures to speed up the judicial process and is continuing to introduce a new criminal and civil legal system. Bulgaria had decided to introduce a special court and prosecutor's office for organised crime, but although the courts have issued more rulings in high-level organised crime cases, at the same time, they also acquitted a number of high-ranking officials in symptomatic cases of corruption, conflict of interest, fraud and organised crime.
These shortcomings must be dealt with by the summer of 2011. The CVM is monitored by the Commission and therefore should not be covered in the Council talks on Schengen that are supposed to focus on the 7 technical areas, but countries like France and Germany want to examine the CVM.
The Bulgarian government has described the report on Bulgaria as positive and objective. Justice Minister Margarita Popova is reported by AFP as saying that for the first time since the CVM was set up at the European Commission, it has given a positive assessment of the rising number of court cases and guilty verdicts for corruption amongst high-ranking officials. (S.P/transl.fl)