The National Council of Austria will ratify Bulgaria's EU accession treaty on April 27, days before the European Commission releases its Monitoring Report on Bulgaria's preparedness to join next January.
This emerged during the first day of the visit of Bulgaria's parliamentary speaker Georgi Pirinski in Austria. There he conferred with his Austrian counterpart Andreas Khol.
Khol reiterated his country's support for Bulgaria' s timely accession to the EU. In his words he gave important instructions to his Bulgarian counterpart how to make up for the lost time in the last five minutes of the "match".
He stressed on the outlined areas of concern to the European Commission - judicial reforms, corruption combat and money laundering.