The Monitoring Report of the European Commission criticizes Bulgaria severely for failing to crack down on corruption and organized crime, and for its inability to absorb properly EU money. File photo
The European Commission presented Wednesday its two expectedly highly critical monitoring reports on Bulgaria.
The documents were presented by the head of the EC Press Office Johannes Leitenberger, and the EC spokesperson Mark Gray.
As expected, the Commission confirmed that two of the country's government agencies allocating EU money would be stripped of their accreditation.
The measure refers to the Central PHARE Finance and Contracts Unit at the Ministry of Finance and the PHARE Executive Agency at the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works of their right to allocate program funding.
Thus, a total of over EUR 825 M of the pre-accession programs destined for Bulgaria had been blocked:
- the temporarily frozen EUR 144 M under the ISPA Program, which used to be managed by the Republican State Agriculture Fund - the country's road agency, which was closed down after corruption scandals.
- EUR 121 M under the SAPARD Program
- EUR 310 M under the PHARE Program, which had already been negotiated by the two executive agencies, whose accreditation had just been officially revoked.
- additional EUR 250 M could also be considered blocked under PHARE as they were expected to be negotiated by these two agencies by the end of 2008, bringing the total figure to EUR 825 M.
According to the EC, the reports on Bulgaria and Romania have been prepared in accordance with the requirements of the Control and Collaboration Mechanism that came into force after the two countries' accession to the EU on January 1, 2007.
Mr. Leitenberger reminded that both Bulgaria and Romania had committed to improve their justice systems and to put more efforts in combating corruption.
As a whole, the EC expresses its great concern about the organized crime that exists in Bulgaria.
"The first monitoring reports on the two states were released in June 2007. Now, a year later, we could present a more detailed evaluation of the situation in Sofia and Bucharest. The present reports are objective and balanced. They concern the progress as at the same time show what more could be done," Leitenberger said.
The Commission prepared only one report on Romania - on fighting high-level corruption, compared to two reports on Bulgaria - on its progress in the interior and judicial affairs, and on the absorption of EU funds.
"The situation in Bulgaria differs from that in Romania but the EC does not aim at comparing the two countries," he added.
In his words, the situation in Romania was complicated. The basic elements of a functioning system were already present. But the base is found to be fragile and decisions in relation to the combating of corruption were politically motivated to a great extent.
According to the EC Report, Romania's commitment to reforms in the key institutions was not steadily implemented, and it needed to demonstrate its willingness to punish high-level corruption.
With respect to Bulgaria, Leitenberger pointed out that the judicial reforms were highly necessary.
Bulgaria is found to have made steps in the right direction over the last six months, with the establishing of the State National Security Agency and the willingness to reform the Interior Ministry.
"Monitoring from this point onwards is to show if these measures will bring actual results through investigation and launching legal proceedings against corrupted high-level officials", Leitenberger said.
He pointed out that the European Commission has adopted a separate report for the management of EU funds in Bulgaria - a measure taken for the first time in EU's history.
In his words, the EU had already provided significant financial assistance for specific improvements in the life of Bulgarian citizens.
At the same time, however, Leitenberger emphasized that over the last six months the EC had frozen temporarily EU funding over violations discovered through the systems for audit and control
A considerable amount of work has been performed for overcoming the problems in this area, but the EC still does not have sufficient confidence to unfreeze the funds.
"That is why the EC has withdrawn the accreditation for two government agencies in Bulgaria, managing funds under the PHARE pre-accession program. The European Commission also made a decision to terminate the funding for infrastructure projects from the cohesion funds of the ISPA program", the EC spokesperson announced.
Leitenberg underscored that as soon as Bulgaria made the necessary steps for the improvement of the financial management and control, the EC would review its decision.
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