As baroness Emma Nicholson, European rapporteur on Romania, said on May 16, European commissioner Olli Rehn likes to hold the cards close to his chest. His decision to continue to do so for another good five months, instead of announcing Romania and Bulgaria’s European Union entry date, seems to do more: trick the two into an intense sweat. The European Commission (EC) is known for staging such surprises, but then, so are Bulgaria and Romania.

As a 2006 Transparency International (TI) report on corruption in Romania said, after closing accession negotiations in 2004, the country lost interest in institutional reforms and instead started worrying about ways to avoid the activation of safeguard clauses upon accession. Moreover, reforms in the public system still met with resistance from inside, even if reforms were already irreversible. Things in the Romanian government haven’t changed too much in this respect since 2004, so, even if the country does deserve its January 1 2007 promise, it should keep being pressured to fight corruption and achieve public integrity, the report said.

Rehn, as Nicholson said, wants to see both Bulgaria and Romania win. So “it is absolutely clear they are going to do so – January 1 2007 is going to be the day for Romania and Bulgaria’s full membership of the EU”, she said.

However, the EC decision to postpone pointing out a date doused some of the optimism of Romania, which expected to hear a clear statement on May 16, even if that involved conditions for cleaning up the house.

On May 16 and 17, moods in Romania swung between disappointment and unrest, and some necessary chunks of encouragement and optimism were necessary. Those came from prime minister Calin Popescu-Tariceanu, foreign minister Mihai-Razvan Ungureanu and minister of European integration Anca-Daniela Boagiu. All three said that since a safeguard clause was not activated, the date remained January 1 2007. Romanians should be calm and pragmatic in face of the EC decision to issue another monitoring report in October, Ungureanu said.

Pessimists, however, had their sway as well: they saw the delayed decision as worrisome, especially since eight EU countries still haven’t ratified Bulgaria’s and Romania’s accession treaties, the Romanian paper Gardianul wrote. The EC, however, will continue to push those eight to ratify the treaty by the end of the year, as planned, EC president Jose Manuel Barroso said in Bulgaria on May 17, after it became clear that Bulgaria has the same concerns.

Emil Boc, president of Romania’s Democratic Party, might insist that Bulgaria’s concern is justified, since, as he said, it was its lagging behind that made the EC message so strict on both countries.

Had Romania been in the place of Bulgaria, its membership would most probably have already been postponed, Tariceanu said the same day. According to the two countries’ accession treaties, the EC can activate a safeguard clause in the case of Romania with a qualified majority, while a unanimous decision would be needed in the case of Bulgaria. Tariceanu said that he would have been happier had the EC made a clearer distinction between the two countries – something that EC president Jose Manuel Barroso said is going to happen in the October report. The EC had not been so strict in reporting on any other EU country, Tariceanu said.

Still, Romania has other reasons to be proud and happy – the “red” areas that an October 2005 report on Romania said might justify the activation of safeguard clauses are down from 14 to four, which is “not so many”, as European Parliament rapporteur on Romania Pierre Moscovisi said.

Romania needs to take serious actions to accredit paying agencies in handling common agriculture policy expenditures; set up a proper integrated administration and control system in agriculture; build up the necessary rendering collection and treatment facilities in line with the acquis on TSE (mad cow disease) and animal by-products; and ensure that the tax administration IT systems are ready for inter-operability with those of the rest of the union, to enable a correct collection of VAT throughout the EU internal market.

If Romania fails to meet all necessary criteria, it might have safeguard measures imposed in three areas: the internal market, the judiciary and fight against corruption, and the disbursement of EU funds. Those can be taken up for up to three years after accession, the report said.

Tariceanu, representatives of the Romanian ministries, and state agencies insisted that a few months of hard work would be enough to wipe out the “red” problems, which were only technical. Tariceanu said that poor institutional efficiency was the reason that Romania still has a big number of areas marked as “yellow”, or areas that continue to need attention, but do not arouse serious concern.

However, he said that that there will be no changes in government now or upon entry: “You don’t change horses in midstream”.

One thing that became clear after heated debates on Romania’s and Bulgaria’s shortcomings was that subsequent EU accessions will happen after a lot more consideration, especially concerning corruption, which continues to be a problem for both countries. The reason is that the Western Balkan countries that follow – Albania, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia-Montenegro – have high corruption indices that will considerably hamper their development and, subsequently, their EU accession, the TI report said. And while corruption was considerably overlooked in the accession of the EU 10 in 2004, it cannot continue to be so if the EU wants to successfully continue future enlargements and its broader development policy even where membership perspective is absent.

So, as TI said, the EU has lessons to learn, and among those is integrating anti-corruption mechanisms into the accession processes of future EU wannabes, or else risk lowered popularity within accessory countries due to loss of EU funds to an elite few; giving another strong argument to nationalist circles; reinforcing anti-European sentiment; and contributing to the legitimacy crisis that the EU faces.

One of the clearest signals that the EC report gave to both Bulgaria and Romania was that they need to guarantee proper spending of EU funds. If not, they would risk disbursement of funds or cause the EC to claim financial corrections or recovery.

Therefore, the EC “no date” policy might reasonably enough be looked at in this context as well: while the two do their October “homework”, they are also sending proper signals to future acceders.