Bulgaria becomes EU member on January 1 2007 - Bulgaria and the World news

Bulgaria becomes EU member on January 1 2007

09:00 Mon 02 Oct 2006 - Clive Leviev-Sawyer

But much work remains to be done as Bulgaria joins the EU on January 1 2007

STAND AND DELIVER: Bulgaria’s accession to the European Union is well deserved and the country will be an efficient EU member, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, left, said during a visit to Sofia on September 27. He officially handed a copy of the EC report recommending Bulgaria’s EU accession in January 2007 to the Speaker of Parliament, Georgi Pirinski. Barroso said that Bulgaria had reason to celebrate but the country’s people and institutions should sustain the reform drive.

The leaders of Bulgaria and Romania will meet on a bridge across the Danube on New Year’s Day 2007 to celebrate the accession of the two countries to the European Union.

But they will do so mindful of the European Commission, while recommending that the two states be admitted to the EU on January 1, having said that Bulgaria and Romania were not 100 per cent ready, and would face a strict monitoring process in key areas including judicial reform, the campaign against organised crime and corruption, and aspects of agriculture. Failure could raise the risk of the invocation of safeguard clauses and the suspension of huge sums in EU funds earmarked for the two countries.

Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev, speaking at a September 27 news conference at the Cabinet office after meeting EC president Jose Manuel Barroso, said: “Who would have believed back in 1996/97 (the time of Bulgaria’s economic meltdown) that in 2006 our country would be capable of becoming an EU member?”

In a special television broadcast hours after the release of the September 26 report, Stanishev said: “To Bulgaria and the Bulgarian people, this represents the genuine and final fall of the Berlin Wall”.

In the same broadcast, he said: “Bulgaria will bring fresh vigour into the EU, with our enviable economic growth and business environment”.

“I can assure you that the Government’s clock has already been adjusted to January 2 2007,” Stanishev said.

In an interview with mass-circulation Bulgarian-language daily 24 Chassa, Stanishev rejected speculation that the report would be followed by a Cabinet reshuffle. With the work ahead, there were more important things to do than replace ministers. This comment was echoed by Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin, who said that if the Cabinet was changed, enthusiasm would wane and work would stop. Ahmed Dogan, leader of the Movement of Rights and Freedoms (MRF), one of the parties in the tripartite governing coalition, said that Cabinet changes were not on the agenda. Dogan welcomed the EC report, and said that the monitoring provisions in agriculture were necessary because there was much work to be done.

Former prime minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg, leader of the National Movement Simeon II, also a party in the coalition, said that the report showed that reforms in the country were moving in the correct direction.

President Georgi Purvanov said that Bulgaria would not enter the EU as a consumer, but with the aim of strengthening it. “It will not be an overstatement to say that the signing of Bulgaria’s EU accession treaty was the most important event in our history,” Purvanov said.

“After today, we are in the Champions League,” Purvanov said during a presidential election campaign meeting with youth in Bourgas, on the Black Sea.

Against the background of the presidential elections scheduled for October 22, opposition figures tempered their welcome of the confirmation of the January 1 2007 accession date with brickbats against the Government.

Nedelcho Beronov, who is standing against Purvanov with the support of the right-wing Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) and Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria (DSB), said that in spite of the recognition of the efforts made, the EC report represented a negative assessment of the Government. The fact of the unprecedented system of monitoring was a “humiliation for the Government” Beronov said, although it should not be seen as a humiliation for the Bulgarian people, he said.

UDF leader Petar Stoyanov, who was president before being defeated by Purvanov in 2001, said that the EC report was a “failure for the Government”.

DSB leader Ivan Kostov said that Bulgaria was facing “membership in quarantine”.

From a financing point of view, the report’s recommendations were worse than the imposition of safeguard clauses, because the report posed restrictions on the use of EU structural funds, Kostov said. At the end of 2007, people would understand the consequences of the report, because it would then become clear that Bulgaria had paid higher membership fees while receiving less funds. “We will pay for being called an EU member and will not receive any financial aid,” Kostov said.