Ahead of the European Commission's interim report on Bulgaria's progress on judiciary and the fight against corruption and organised crime, Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev sent his first messages not to Bulgarians but to foreign readers. The report's publishing date is yet to be unveiled but the actual work on it started on June 9 after EC sent its experts to assess Bulgaria's progress.

Under pressure from opposition and the media over several corruption scandals in the past six months concerning the abuse of EU funds, Stanishev picked the Financial Times as a mailbox to the EU. In a June 10 interview he said that "imposing sanctions for failing to pursue judiciary reforms with enough vigour would undermine the government and encourage political extremists". The speculation that the EC was to punish Bulgaria and make an example of the country would harm the reform process, he said, because "a very negative political report will harm the people who are doing their best to implement the reforms".

Stanishev's biggest concern was that a negative report would help out parties like ultra-nationalist Ataka to play "their politico-economic games" and promote the idea that Bulgaria was being treated "like a second-class member of the European Union".

The same day as the FT's story on Stanishev, The Washington Times published another article on how Bulgaria tackled organised crime. The story was marked as an "Opinion", the author being Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the American Center for Democracy.

The positive headline "No Bulgarian sanctions" was picked up immediately by the Bulgarian Government media service, translated into Bulgarian and uploaded as a main story on the Government's website.

The author put her trust in Stanishev's efforts to fight corruption by describing Bulgaria as an economically stable country. The article quoted favourable surveys conducted by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and Ernst & Young, all portraying Bulgaria as a booming economy. "Clearly, this economic stability and reform could not have been possible in a criminal and corrupt environment. Yet, the European Commission is threatening Bulgaria with sanctions: the EC claims Bulgaria has not done enough to fight corruption and organised crime," she wrote.

The story did have a line from Stanishev who argued that EC sanctions on Bulgaria "could destabilise the country and affect the fragile stability of the region". He also said that sanctions could undermine Bulgaria's progress and deprive the pro-European Bulgarians of the benefits of EU membership.

The latter statement coincided with the release of a survey conducted by the Institute of Sociology with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences on May 20 to 26. One in three Bulgarians believed their country has gained from EU membership, the survey said. The view that Bulgaria has benefited from joining the EU was shared predominantly by people aged between 18 and 30, highly educated respondents, students, state- and private-sector managers and affluent Sofia residents.

This optimism contained in Ehrenfeld's story and the survey was in sharp contrast to the signals coming from the EC itself.

Bulgarian-language Dnevnik quoted EC Regional Policy Commissioner Danuta Huebner as saying that Bulgaria risked losing all funding under the Ispa pre-accession aid programme unless the country proved it can use the funds as intended. Her statement came after the EC's March decision to defer part of the payments to Bulgaria under the EU's pre-accession programmes Sapard, Ispa and Phare over allegations of conflict of interest among those responsible for distributing the funds locally. Bulgaria was given a June 16 deadline to show it has addressed the issue seriously, fuelling the atmosphere preceding the EC report on the country's judiciary.