Bulgaria, Romania under strictest EU eye

Financial Times 5th September 2006

Bulgaria and Romania are set to get the go-ahead to join the European Union on January 1 under the strictest conditions ever applied to new members of the club. Bulgaria will come under the toughest EU scrutiny and faces possible legal and financial sanctions unless it proves it is serious in tackling organized crime and high-level corruption. Olli Rehn, the enlargement commissioner, and Jose Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, are on Tuesday expected to warn Sergey Stanishev, Bulgarian prime minister, that his country will be under unprecedented scrutiny in the coming months. “We think the best way to achieve our aim is to work with them with the threat of these measures,” said a senior European Commission official. “It’s a better way to achieve results than by postponing until 2008.”

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