Just 18 months after becoming the member of the European Union,
Bulgaria is facing the risk of losing millions worth of EU funds just
because of widely prevalent corruption and crime in the country.

According to the reports, there have been 150 contract killings
since 1990, but not a single conviction. The latest took place in
April, near the busiest bus stops in Sofia; the best-selling author
Georgi Stoev was shot three times, once in the head, and died later
that day in hospital. Former wrestler, Stoev had written nine books
about Bulgaria's mafia bosses, many of whom he claimed to know
personally.

Bulgaria, along with its neighbour Romania, is subject to EU’s
special monitoring because neither country was deemed to fully comply
with EU standards when they joined the bloc in 2007. Last week, a team
of EU officials was in Sofia to assess progress ahead of a key report
in July.

Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev admits there are problems, but he
doesn’t feel that cutting aid is the right answer. He says, "If
Bulgaria would be punished. Who would suffer? Bulgarians have always
been very pro-European and they would expect indeed that they would not
be deprived of the possibility to enjoy the membership of the EU, to
benefit from it."

The EU has already frozen hundreds of millions in aid for Bulgaria's
battered roads and other desperately needed development projects, and
there are billions more to come in the next years.

Under growing pressure from the EU, the Bulgarian authorities have
come into action. They have organized a new agency to crack down on
organized crime, and new ministers have been appointed to ensure EU
money does not fall into the wrong hands.