Romania and Bulgaria must make urgent moves to fight corruption and speed up the reform of the administration and judiciary, if they hope to avoid the postponement of their integration, scheduled for January 1st, 2007, reads the latest monitoring report the European Commission released on Tuesday.
The warning is nonetheless laced with encouragement: Romania and Bulgaria''s chances of joining the EU in 2007 are still intact and they will have solid financial support in order for them not to miss this target. In 2006, Romania will receive aid worth almost 1.2 billion euros, while Bulgaria''s aid will total 545 million euros.
The report was welcomed by Romanian officials and the European representatives in Bucharest. President Traian Basescu said the document was "exigent and objective", a report that "should not make us glad, should not make us sad. It must keep us cool, confident that we can take make use of this chance of joining the EU, on January 1st, 2007".
Premier Calin Popescu-Tariceanu stated that integration on January 1st, 2007 is perfectly achievable.
In his turn, British ambassador Quinton Quayle, the representative of the country currently holding the EU presidency, considers that the document conveys a message of encouragement to the authorities in Bucharest.
According to the document, Romania meets the political integration criteria, is considered a functioning market economy and has made progress as regards the adoption of the European acquis. The document, largely retaining the structure of last year, has some novelties, though, classifying problems as follows: the chapters where Romania has met or is about to meet integration criteria (green), the chapters where it needs to make greater efforts (yellow) and the chapters where there are serious concerns (red).
All accession criteria - political, economical and acquis issues - are dealt with in this manner.
The document, written in a tone of moderate optimism, gives Romania a better mark than Bulgaria for the first time since the Commission began evaluations. The list of domains considered as being of "serious concern" includes 14 points in the case of Romania, and 16 points in the case of Bulgaria.
As regards the economic criterion, the document says that Romania still meets the functioning market economy sub-criterion, but needs to endorse some serious reforms if it wants to meet the second required sub-criterion, namely "the ability to cope with the forces of the common market".
Should this sub-criterion not be met, integration would be impossible.
