Brussels, 12/02/2009 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday, the European Commission stated that over recent months, Bulgaria had made “efforts” to improve its legal system and fight corruption but Romania had gone backwards in these areas. These are the conclusions contained in the two reports assessing progress made by Bucharest and Sofia, which the European Commission adopted on Thursday 12 February as part of the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM), set up at the time of the two countries' accession on 1 January 2007. With the annual reports expected out in July, the Commission is now encouraging the two countries to step up their efforts.
According to the Commission's spokesman, Johannes Laitenberger, the interim report on Bulgaria reflects, “the efforts made by the Bulgarian authorities since the Commission's last report in July”. Laitenberger added that, “these efforts now have to be sustained and consolidated in order to deliver concrete results over the next six months”. The Commission was delighted that in the fight against corruption and organised crime, a pilot project on joint investigation teams had been launched and which should bring members of organised crime syndicates to trial. In the area of legal reform, the Commission took note of progress made at the Inspectorate to the Supreme Judicial Council, as well as the measures announced for improving administrative management of the courts and the transparency of appointment procedures. However, it also states that it is imperative that Bulgaria adopts the most recent laws necessary for affecting completion of the legal system. At a legislative level, the law on conflicts of interest was adopted and must now be effectively applied and the law on public procurement has been amended. Laws on land exchanges, party funding and the confiscation of criminal organisations' assets are still awaited.
Due to these poor results, Bulgaria lost €220 million in pre-accession (PHARE) aid last year and €560 million was suspended.
Mr Laitenberger indicated that, “the pace of progress has not been maintained” and added that if it is going to reverse the loss of pace of recent months, “important that the Romanian authorities regain momentum on judicial reform and the fight against corruption”. The Commission explained that the work carried out by the National Anti-corruption Department(DNA) had maintained its positive track-record of prosecuting cases of high level corruption but the Romanian parliament was still blocking certain investigations into some of these cases. In addition, the stability of the Romanian anti-corruption framework suffered several serious challenges through the Parliament's initiative to change nomination procedure of senor prosecutors and through its continued attempts to amend the Penal Procedures Code “with a purpose to severely restrict the rights of the prosecution”. Despite some positive signals on legal reform, the Commission considers that it is difficult to prove what results have been attained: the authorities have certainly perfected the draft project amendments in the civil code, a draft criminal law code, and draft criminal and civil legal codes but these texts still need to be adopted. (B.C./trans/rh)