A series of senior European Union officials have told Bulgaria in recent days that the country needs to show better results in fighting organised crime and corruption if it wants its hopes fulfilled of joining the EU on January 1 2007.

On September 26, the European Commission will issue a landmark report on whether Bulgaria and Romania are ready for EU membership next year.

A number of media reports have suggested that Bulgaria will indeed be admitted at the beginning of 2007, but subject to strict conditions.

On September 5, London’s Financial Times reported: “Bulgaria will come under the toughest EU scrutiny, and faces possible legal and financial sanctions unless it proves it is serious in tackling organised crime and high-level corruption”.

Speaking after a meeting with Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev in Strasbourg, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barosso said that media reports about what the EC report would say were not necessarily accurate.

The September 26 report had not yet been drafted, Barosso said.

This was why, when media reports said that something concrete was known, it should not be accepted because the EC report had not yet been finalised.

The latest series of signals about organised crime and corruption started on September 1 with statements by European enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn.

“There has been serious progress in several areas in the technical preparations, while we need to see further improvements in the critical areas of the reform of the judiciary and the fight against organised crime and corruption,” Rehn said.

He said that he wanted to see Bulgaria in the EU in January 2007, “but my duty as a guardian of the treaties is to ensure that Bulgaria joins when it is ready”.

A slightly more positive tone was sounded a few days later by Franco Frattini, the European commissioner on justice, freedom and security, after he was briefed by Interior Minister Roumen Petkov on steps being taken by Bulgaria against crime.

Petkov’s briefing covered, among other issues, results against illegal drug trafficking, migration issues, the special anti-corruption units being set up in the prosecution service, and the increase in the number of customs officers.

Bulgarian National Radio reported Frattini as responding positively to the report, but he was silent on the question of whether progress was satisfactory.

Speaking after his Strasbourg meeting with Stanishev, Barosso said that he welcomed the Bulgarian Government’s prompt response to the issues raised in the May 17 EC report on Bulgaria’s readiness for EU membership.

“We hope that the reforms that are underway will be concluded and the authorities will not slacken the pace.”

The EC had seen success in a number of areas, “but we are waiting for further evidence and results in the combat against corruption and organised crime,” Barosso said.

According to a statement by the Cabinet media office, Stanishev promised that Bulgaria would “100 per cent” complete the action plan adopted by the Cabinet on June 8 before the September 26 EC report was published.

Speaking after a meeting with European Parliament president Josep Borrell and the chairpersons of EP parliamentary groups, Stanishev said: “The situation in Bulgaria in all areas, and mostly in the field of the fight against corruption and organised crime, has dramatically changed since April 2005, when we signed the treaty of accession”.

On the question of new changes to the constitution to satisfy EC concerns about the independence and the accountability of the judiciary, Stanishev said that the amendments had been closely discussed with the EC, and the latest drafts had been sent to the EC on August 24. The constitutional amendments would be tabled in Parliament prior to the EC report, Stanishev said.