Bulgaria should ask itself not only how it could benefit from Europe, but also how it could benefit from debate on matters of mutual interest in Europe, European Commission president José Manuel Barroso said.

Bulgaria had already showed active engagement in discussions, with Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev’s participation in the Kosovo status debate at the EU summit in mid-December 2007.

Romania and Bulgaria’s prime ministers expressed their opinion together with France, Germany and the UK, and everyone paid attention with interest, because they knew the region better than us, Barroso told Dnevnik daily.

Barroso highlighted the way that Bulgaria had defended its demands to spell the EU currency as ‘evro’ instead of ‘euro’. It was an example how a country could defend a cause it considered important, he said.

Bulgaria’s first year in the EU was a success both for the country and for Europe. It proved the critics wrong by showing that having accepted Bulgaria and Romania into the EU on January 1 2007 was worthwhile, the EC president said.

He defended the unprecedented monitoring mechanism imposed on Bulgaria on corruption and organised crime and the judicial system. The mechanism helped politicians and administration stay focused on those issues that they needed to focus on, and helped society hold them responsible, Barroso told Dnevnik.

He called on countries that had imposed labour market restrictions on Bulgarians, to annul these restrictions soon.