The European Commission's (EC) report about Bulgaria has been made public by Brussels, the EC announced Thursday.

The report is once again critical about the country's lack of progress in the fight against corruption and organized crime.

"The current report takes note of some initial steps towards structural and legislative reform taken within the prosecution office, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of the Interior. These measures need to be sustained and further extended in order to deliver concrete results," the EC says in an official memo sent to Bulgarian media.

The EC recommends that, "in order to demonstrate systemic and irreversible change, Bulgaria needs to show that it has put in place an autonomously functioning, stable judiciary which is able to detect and sanction conflicts of interests, corruption and organized crime and preserve the rule of law. This means in particular to adopt the remaining laws which are needed to complete the legal system and to show through concrete cases of indictments, trials and convictions regarding high-level corruption and organized crime that the legal system is capable of implementing the laws in an independent and efficient way."

The six benchmarks for Bulgaria, set by the EC include: adopting constitutional amendments; removing any ambiguity regarding the independence and accountability of the judicial system; ensuring a more transparent and efficient judicial process; continuing the reform of the judiciary in order to enhance professionalism accountability and efficiency; conducting and reporting investigations into allegations of high-level corruption; taking further measures to prevent and fight corruption; implementing a strategy to fight organized crime.

The full text of the EC memo and a link to the report can be found at: http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=101191