BULGARIA AND ROMANIA GIVEN EU DEADLINE

Bulgaria and Romania were on Tuesday given less than five months to prove they are ready to join the European Union, amid warnings they risk delayed entry and the loss of hundreds of millions of euros in subsidies.

Failure to reform could prove even more costly if it provokes a political backlash in western European countries already tiring of the EU’s enlargement process.

Officials in Brussels point out that countries such as France, Germany and the Netherlands have yet to ratify the accession treaties for the two applicant countries and will be watching the reform process carefully. “If we issue another critical report in the autumn, it is bound to have a political effect,” said one European Commission official. “Countries like Germany and the Netherlands say they will ratify the accession treaties, but sometimes parliaments are hard to control.”

The thinly veiled warning is part of an effort by Brussels to put pressure on Bulgaria – and to a lesser extent Romania – to step up their reforms, particularly in fighting organised crime and corruption.

José Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, said on Tuesday he believed it was “doable” for both countries to join the EU on time on January 1 2007, but added: “The rules of the club must be respected. We expect Bulgaria and Romania to take immediate corrective action in those problematic sectors.”

Bulgaria is the bigger headache. Mr Barroso on Tuesday said there were six “red flag” areas of serious concern to Brussels, including the fight against corruption, organised crime, money laundering and the control of EU funds.

Romania was shown four “red flags”, all in technical areas such as agricultural payment systems, but Olli Rehn, EU enlargement commissioner, said Bucharest had to prove its recent crackdown on corruption and serious crime was irreversible.

The Commission will assess by October whether the two countries have heeded its warnings. If not, it could recommend delaying the entry date by a year.

Mr Rehn said other safeguard measures, including the withholding lucrative EU farm and regional subsidies, could be introduced if the two countries failed to put in place new computer systems and anti-fraud measures.

Mr Barroso and Mr Rehn sought to strike a balance between keeping up the pressure for reform while trying not to inflame anti-enlargement sentiment in western Europe, apparent in last year’s French and Dutch No votes to the EU constitution.

Mr Barroso said Bulgaria and Romania had made great progress in many areas and urged member states to honour their promises to enact the accession treaties.

The carrot-and-stick ap-proach was broadly backed by political leaders in the European parliament in Strasbourg. But Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the Greens, said Mr Rehn should have postponed accession until 2008 to demonstrate to future applicants that the EU would not fudge the admission criteria.

Sergey Stanishev, Bulgaria’s prime minister, highlighted the positive aspects of the Commission’s report, which reduced from 16 to six the number of red flag warnings facing the country.

But he said it was not a day for “complacency and trumpets” and promised new efforts to stamp out graft and gangsterism. “Those who are used to living in corruption, breaking rules, through crime, will face hard times,” he said.

Boyko Todorov, director of the Center for the Study of Democracy think-tank in Sofia, said: “Delaying the decision infuses uncertainty in the political environment and will focus government capacity on pushing forward criminal investigations at the expense of other reforms.”

Romanians were disappointed not to be given an unconditional date for EU entry but Calin Tariceanu, prime minister, said accession next year was “perfectly feasible”.