The monitoring of Bulgaria under the EU’s Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM) will be lifted during the term of office of the current European Commission, the head of the EU’s executive body, Jean-Claude Juncker, has said.

The mandate of the college of commissioners headed by Juncker will expire at the end of 2019.

“I have always said […] that Bulgaria will exit the Mechanism during the mandate of this Commission,” Juncker has told Bulgarian reporters after he and Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov attended a meeting of the European People’s Party in Brussels ahead of a European Council Summit.

“I am convinced that the Prime Minister and his government will do everything to ensure that the decision was taken during the mandate of the current Commission. It will be taken,” Juncker said, according to a transcript of his comments translated into Bulgarian and issued by the government press office in Sofia.

He also said that Bulgaria had never been coupled with Romania in the process of supervision under the CVM and that every country would be assesed separately according to its own merit.

“There has never been a Bulgarian-Romanian pair,” Juncker has said, according to the transcript.

Bulgaria and Romania agreed to be supervised for their progress in the reform of the judiciary and the fight against corruption and organized crime when they joined the EU in 2007. The CVM was set up to smooth the entry of both countries by helping them to address the outstanding shortcomings in those areas and at the same time safeguard the workings of EU’s policies and institutions.

Juncker said earlier this week that the Commission might end the monitoring of Romania before it does so with Bulgaria if Romania maintained the pace of reform progress it has been showing over the past years.

"There is no intimate link between what I would call “the Romanian case” and “the Bulgarian case”. If Romania is ready before our Bulgarian friends, it is obvious that the mechanism would be terminated, if it reaches the level of expectations of the Commission and the other member states,” EurActiv quoted Juncker as saying after a meeting with Romanian Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos.

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