There are strong indications from Bulgarian and European Union circles that the September 26 European Commission report will recommend that Bulgaria and Romania be admitted to the EU on January 1 next year, but with a series of measures to bring problem areas up to EU standards.

The EC report will not be the final word on the 2007 accession of the two countries. This will be subject to debate and decision by the European Council, due to meet in October.

As the expected date of accession nears, the process of ratification of the accession treaty between the EU and Bulgaria and Romania is not yet complete. Germany, France and Denmark have yet to give their final approval to the treaty. In Germany, the first reading debate is scheduled for September 28. In France, the senate will debate the treaty on October 3. Given domestic partisan political divisions in these two countries about the readiness of Bulgaria and Romania for EU accession, along with wider debates about EU expansion, these debates are expected to be lively and difficult.

Within Bulgaria, senior political figures, including Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev and Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin, have expressed expectations that an accession date of January 1 2007 will be confirmed. However, along with European Integration Minister Meglena Kouneva, no Government leader in Bulgaria has explicitly ruled out the possibility of some form of measures accompanying accession.

Most likely to be on the list of areas subject to, at very least, a form of monitoring are justice and home affairs, and possibly agriculture and public health. Justice and home affairs refers to the problem of shortcomings in action against organised crime and corruption. Several senior European figures, including EC enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn, have repeatedly called on Bulgaria to show a significant improvement in results against organised crime and graft.

The Associated Press quoted Graham Watson, leader of the liberal democrat bloc in the European Parliament, as saying that a number of safeguard clauses would be needed in the accession of the two countries. “The extent and nature of these clauses will now be a subject of debate.”

A possible scenario in the EC report being released on September 26 is for the two countries to be given a revised list of urgent matters to be resolved before accession.

Accompanying EU accession is the question of access by Bulgarians and Romanians to the labour markets of member states. In the UK, where this issue has been high on the political and media agenda in recent weeks, a Downing Street spokesperson told a news briefing on September 18 that migration “involved complex issues where there were arguments on both sides of the debate and as such we would take some time to come to a conclusion on our position”.

Two days earlier, UK home secretary John Reid was reported to have said: “We need to manage immigration carefully, including in respect of the forthcoming decisions over Romania and Bulgaria”.