By Bruno Waterfield - 4th September 2006
Bulgaria will join the EU on time next year but will face tough financial penalties if Sofia fails to make good on anti-corruption and crime fighting pledges.
The conditions applied to Bulgaria’s EU membership on January 1 2007 are set to be toughest regime ever imposed on a new entry.
Bulgarian leader Sergei Stanishev will hear the news in person during meetings with the European commission in Strasbourg on Tuesday.
Sofia will breath a sigh of relief that enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn has not opted for postponing Bulgaria’s membership until 2008.
But he will be warned by Rehn and commission president José Manuel Barroso that a 2007 rendez-vous will be not be a soft option under stringent conditions.
Top-level commission officials have told the FT that Sofia will be under unprecedented scrutiny in the coming months and devastating legal and financial sanctions could be the consequence.
“These are the toughest safeguard measures yet. This is something new,” said the EU official. “These measures can be triggered at any time.”
Brussels has decided that the best strategy for enforcing EU required reforms is allow Sofia in rather than pushing Bulgaria away from European procedures and pressure.
“We think the best way to achieve our aim is to work with them with the threat of these measures. It’s a better way to achieve results than by postponing until 2008,” a senior official told the FT.
The commission has expressed “disappointment” over Bulgarian efforts to tackle organised crime and high level corruption in the administration.
A failure to reach exacting commission standards could hit Bulgarian plans to invest €8bn in infrastructure between 2007 and 2015.
A programme of investment, outlined by Stanishev to foreign ambassadors and financial institutions in Sofia on Monday, will be heavily dependent on EU cash that will be a hostage to Brussels reform demands.
The commission will on September 26 publish the latest progress reports on both Romania and Bulgaria in a chilled political climate on enlargement.
Bulgaria will be banking an August crackdown on corrupt administrators and pending prosecutions of organised crime figures.
Speaking on Monday, European justice commissioner Franco Frattini welcomed Bulgarian moves in the right direction.
Following a meeting with Bulgarian interior minister Rumen Petkov, Frattini promised that Sofia’s efforts would noted in the Brussels report.
Petkov also gave Frattini information about new anti-corruption units that are to be created to boost prosecution of corrupt officials.
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