Reuters: Bulgaria may lose money because of crime
Submitted by Krasimir Boyanov on Fri, 05/30/2008 - 10:49.
The European Commission warned the new EU member Bulgaria that it may lose resources from the funds of the Union if it fails to fight corruption and organized crime, reported "Reuters".
Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said during a seminar about crime in the Balkans that the Commission will report on the failures of Bulgaria in the fight against organised crime in July. "We will have to take a decision on the matter with EU funds - the money of European taxpayers, whether there are as many endemic problems which eventually require the freezing of EU funds," he said.
Rehn did not wish to give more details on the topic. "I do not want to outstrip events, we are currently preparing these reports," he explained. EU source said last week for "Reuters" that Brussels was increasingly closer to the decision to stop some of the EU funds for Bulgaria. Sofia was facing the risk of losing hundreds of millions of euros, which had already been frozen and experiencing more strict control on spending of around 11 billion Euros from the EU that the country should have received by 2013.
The July report will include a description of the fight against corruption in Bulgaria and its neighbor Romania, which also joined the block in January 2007. Both former communist countries are subject to special monitoring, since they have not covered the full EU standards in areas of justice, combating crime and payment systems at the time of their admission.
Bulgaria seems to lose money because of evidence that corruption directly affect its agencies governing payments from the EU. Romania may receive a warning to intensify the fight against corruption, but no financial penalty, says the source. The biggest concern in Brussels is the suspicion of links between the "old movement" politicians whose roots are from the communist era, Russian business interests and organized crime, says the source.
According to the nameless source Stanishev seems to have no authority to impose measures to combat crime and organized crime, which have been highlighted by a series of undisclosed contract killings.
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