EU urges more anti-corruption efforts in Romania, Bulgaria
Bulgaria - Romania
(BRUSSELS) - Romania and Bulgaria have made strides in their efforts to fight corruption and reform their judiciaries but still have a way to go before meeting EU standards, the European Commission said Friday.
The European Union's executive arm made its latest assessment in a twice-yearly report that has been monitoring judicial reforms in the EU's two youngest members since they joined the 27-nation bloc in 2007.
France and Germany have cited their concerns about corruption in Romania and Bulgaria to block the two countries' bid to join Europe's border-free Schengen travel zone this year.
The commission's report on Romania lamented that "important high-level corruption cases have seen little movement in court" since the EU executive's last assessment in July 2010.
The Romanian parliament "prevented investigations into allegations of corruption by a former minister" and made big budget cuts to the National Integrity Agency, which monitors financial interests of public officials.
But the EU executive praised Romania for giving a "constructive" response to recommendations made in the July report, which had criticised Bucharest for "significant shortcomings" and insufficient political will to reform.
Romania took "several important steps" to speed the handling of legal cases and prepared proposals to boost the recruitment and training of magistrates, the report said.
Bulgaria was pressed to "pursue a thorough reform of the judicial system and of the police" as well as adopt an "effective law" on the seizure of assets.
Since the July report, Bulgaria has maintained an "active policy to tackle organised crime" through police raids and arrests, but the operations "have led as yet to few indictments," the report said.
Although two important verdicts and several indictments linked to high-level corruption took place in the past six months, there were a number of acquittals in some "emblematic cases of high-level corruption, conflict of interest, fraud and organised crime."
The commission will issue its next reports in July.