Bulgaria and Romania face more reforms after joining EU

(BUCHAREST) - Former communist states Bulgaria and Romania join the European Union on New Year's Day, but still have a lot of work to do to measure up to the bloc's standards, particularly in fighting corruption.

When giving the two countries the green light to join the bloc, the EU's executive arm, the European Commission, warned the two eastern European nations to do more.

With the EU now stretching through its two newcomers to the Black Sea, priorities for these nations on the bloc's new eastern borders will be fighting corruption, reducing industrial pollution, and modernizing agriculture.

So on January 1, Romania is to ban cultivation of genetically altered soya, to cut out obligatory military service and to apply a new fiscal code.

And Bulgaria will on December 31 close two reactors at its Kozloduy nuclear power plant, a measure Brussels has demanded for security reasons.

In another move, the Bulgarian parliament is to amend in January the nation's consitution in order to guarantee the independence of its judicial system.

Brussels will also be carefully watching how the newcomers spend the billions of euros (dollars) of development aid and funds they will be receiving.

The EU has so-called safeguard clauses under which it could postpone such grants.

On the plus side, Bulgaria and Romania are dynamic economies with growth expected to end up at 5-6 percent in 2006.

Foreign investors are flocking to these new markets of 22 million people in Romania and eight million in Bulgaria, with key sectors being computers and data processing, tourism, agriculture, the automobile industry and retail.

There is much room for development. The two newcomers will be the poorest countries in the EU, with per capita income of less than 4,000 euros (5,200 dollars), about a third of the norm for the Union's current 25 member states.

The newcomers each have problems in integrating their sizeable Roma, or gypsy, populations, and retired people often must get by on low pensions, sometimes less than 100 euros a month.

The two countries have been racing to get up to speed in order to join the EU, with Bulgaria falling behind Romania in reforms.

Bucharest has been especially strong in reforming its judicial system and fighting corruption.

On the other hand, the Bulgarian government has been unable to stop organized crime from carrying out dramatic gangland killings, often in the capital, although the number of these incidents did drop in 2006 compared with the previous year.

The European Commission said clearly in its final evaluation report, published in September, that while Romania had made progress, organized crime remained a problem in Bulgaria.

In any case, the January 1 enlargement of the EU looks like it will be the last for awhile, after the integration of 10 states, eight of them from the former communist bloc, in May 2004.

The brakes are on after France and the Netherlands rejected a European constitution that was supposed to revitalize the structure of the EU in order to keep the Union from creaking under the weight of so many new members.

So the doors of the EU are going to close for now.

Croatia will have to wait until 2009 or 2010 before joining the Union, while Turkey has no entry date in perspective, despite talks having been officially opened on its candidacy.

In another development on January 1, Slovenia will become the first former Soviet bloc state to adopt the euro common currency, after having joined the EU in the 2004 wave of enlargement.

The changeover to the euro will be a boost towards Slovenia's integration into the most successful countries of the European Union, Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa told AFP in an interview last week.