When Bulgaria joined the European Union in 2007, the country did so knowing that the EU’s legislative acts would supersede its national legislation. Two-and-a-half years later, hardly anyone expected that this loss of national sovereignty would extend to matters such as fighting organised crime and corruption.

The two issues have been a constant concern of the European Commission from the days when Bulgaria applied for EU membership in 1995. This has led only to Bulgaria formally stating its willingness to cope with these issues, which has proven to be ineffective. Now, when Bulgaria has been given access to EU funding, things have changed and the EU seems to have taken matters into its own hands.

This can be one of the takes on the August 21-22 visit to Bulgaria of Franz-Hermann Brüner, head of the European anti-fraud office Olaf.

He arrived a month after the EC released a highly critical and negative interim report on Bulgaria’s readiness to cope with organised crime and corruption, and more than eight months after Bulgarian media broke the scandal of how a company run by the brother of a now-former top-Government official had been the main beneficiary of million in EU funds allocated by the same top-Government official.

Olaf’s message on the first day of Brüner’s visit was simple: “It is necessary for us to see clear and concrete results in the fight against corruption and fraud in Bulgaria – this includes the judiciary and in returning funds”.

When he met Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev, Brüner set a deadline for the results: the end of the year.

In other words, he asked Bulgarian institutions to start doing their work.

If this message had come from the president or the prime minister, for example, it might not have been so worrying. The fact that the head of a foreign organisation such as Olaf spent two days urging and demanding results from Finance Minister Plamen Oresharski, Interior Minister Mihail Mikov, Justice Minister Miglena Tacheva, Prosecutor-General Boris Velchev and head of the State Agency for National Security (SANS) Petko Sertov showed to what extent Bulgaria had lost its sovereignty.

The way in which all of the above reacted to Brüner’s demands demonstrated that there was not a joint stance of all Bulgarian institutions in the fight against corruption.

After meeting Brüner, Sertov, Oresharski and Mikov talked about one thing: communication, as if that was the main reason why Bulgaria has failed in absorbing EU money in a transparent manner.

What the media got from the three officials in terms of a statement was no different from the protocol statements issued by Bulgarian institutions in the past, which so little signalled of a change.

SANS’s media statement said that the two had discussed the options for joint actions against EU funds embezzlement. Sertov assured Brüner of SANS’ willingness for full co-operation based on mutual trust, the statement said.

Oresharski’s main message after talking to Brüner was that they had discussed the possibility of improving communication between Olaf and the ministry. “Bulgaria as an EU member also relies on Olaf. We haven’t discussed matters in detail. Our efforts were aimed at once more establishing the principle of communication among us,” he told reporters after the meeting.

Communication was the main topic of conversation as well between Mikov and Brüner, Mikov told Bulgarian news agency BTA. He highlighted the will for more-regular and more-honest communication and dialogue among partners.

The meetings that Brüner had with Velchev and Tacheva were focused on things other than communication issues. Here the protocol statements from Brüner’s meetings with Sertov, Oresharski and Mikov were left aside.

To Velchev, Brüner said that the work of prosecutors should improve, something about which Velchev had been talking since the day he took up his post in 2006. Again, communication was brought up. This time, instead of just showing a will for better exchange of information, Velchev actually admitted that it was his office’s fault.

“We need to tell our partners what we have achieved more often, because much of it has remained secret to them,” Velchev said.

Tacheva, too, had certain issues to discuss with Brüner.

One of them was amending the law on the state financial inspectorate that will give equal rights to Bulgarian and Olaf officials to investigate companies’ financial records. Another issue was the adoption of a blacklist of companies that will not be allowed to apply for EU funds.

Just two days after Brüner left the country, Bulgaria’s Minister for EU Funds Meglena Plougchieva said that an Olaf mission was to begin in the country on August 25 and would concentrate entirely on checking payments made to Bulgarian companies under the EU’s Sapard pre-accession programme.

Sapard was not the only topic of Olaf interest. More missions were expected to arrive in Bulgaria in the coming few months, focusing on all the other pre-accession and operational EU programmes.

To do that, Olaf would send its own experts to closely work with Bulgarian institutions. On the list of institutions were the National Road Infrastructure Agency (NRIA), the Agriculture Ministry’s payments agency, the prosecutor’s office and the Justice Ministry, as well as Plougchieva’s own team. A German national would be working at the NRIA, and a UK national would be sent to Agriculture Ministry’s payments agency.

So, in just two days and a couple of meetings, Brüner got what he wanted: access to investigations in Bulgaria, which was a clear sign of the lack of trust Olaf had in Bulgaria’s investigative services.

From what happened on day one of Olaf’s mission, it seems that the plan has started to show results: that very day, it was announced that three companies had violated procedures in absorbing EU funds.