The second part of the Monitoring Report on Bulgaria states that the European Commission was going to continue to watch the country closely regarding the six problematic areas dealing with the combating of corruption and organized crime.

The news was reported by the Bulgarian National Television, which claims to have a copy of the final draft of Brussels's report.

Thus, according to the Commission, Bulgaria had achieved some progress with the Constitutional amendments, the new Judicial System Act, and the setting of an Inspectorate at the Supreme Judicial Council. The last institution, however, has not demonstrated any progress in screening for corruption violations.

Bulgaria is also said to have had some progress only in the civic and administrative suits, not in the criminal ones.

The EC points out the reforms in the Interior Ministry were critically important, including the need to invest more in training and salaries of police officers and officials.

Bulgaria is said to have reported nine investigations against magistrates in the first five months of 2008 compared to 17 in all of 2007. This is seen as a poor result given there were 1821 professional judges, 1558 prosecutors, and 564 investigators in Bulgaria.

The Commission emphasizes that the setting up of the State National Security Agency DANS, founded in December 2007, was a step in the right direction but it also states that there must serious political will to tackle corruption in the government, police, and the judicial system.

The EC also commends Bulgaria for having closed down the duty free shops and gas stations on its land borders but it points out that corruption also remained in other fields such as health care, education, public procurement procedures, concessions, privatization, exchange of state owned land and forest plots, and the buying of votes.

Of 294 cases of buying of votes, only 17 have been investigated under a pre-court procedure, and only one suspended sentence with a fine of BGN 1000 has been issued in Bulgaria.

With respect to the combating of organized crime and money laundering, the Commission points out that there had been very little progress. It points out that the "Kushlev Committee" in the Parliament, which is supposed to confiscate property acquired through criminal activity, could work only on cases involving above BGN 60 000 in value, which was too high a threshold for the economic situation in Bulgaria.

The Kushlev Committee has been found to be very ineffective, whereas the judicial procedures are discovered as very slow.

Until May 2008, the Bulgarian courts have issued only 14 sentences for money laundering, and have confiscated a total of only BGN 500 000, EUR 500 000, and USD 35 000.

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