Bulgaria unhappy with 'arbitrary' EU corruption monitoring

Bulgaria unhappy with 'arbitrary' EU corruption monitoring

Sofia and Bucharest last year got the green light for EU entry only under the condition that they would meet certain "benchmarks" on crime and corruption, facing a regime of continued EU monitoring which no new member state ever faced before.

The EU Commission imposed the post-accession guidance since Sofia and Bucharest were seen as insufficiently prepared on the eve of accession. However, Bulgaria believes the regime is unfair as nobody looks at deeply corrupt areas in the rest of Europe.

"Double standards are not to be tolerated. They are out of the question," Bulgarian interior minister Roumen Petkov told a round table discussion in Brussels.

"That's why we need to draw up a comparative measurement for corruption," Mr Petkov said, proposing EU "common standards" which would bring an "objective evaluation of every member state."

"They are measuring only us," one contact said. "But if you compare, you will see that some member states will do worse than us," referring to the south of Italy as one possible example.

"We are at an early stage", said one EU official. "It's difficult because different member states record crimes differently," she added. Another commission source indicated that Bulgaria has no choice but to accept the post-accession monitoring system even if it feels it is unfair.

"They as everyone else accepted the mechanism...this was also a means to avoid the postponement of accession," said the official, referring to the worst-case scenario of a one-year delay of EU entry which Sofia escaped.

The Centre for the Study of Democracy in Sofia said that Bulgarian EU accession in January had been accompanied by a "substantial drop in corruption" at lower government levels

Ognian Shentov, the Centre for the Study of Democracy's director, stressed that  "a lot remains to be done at the level of political corruption. We hear numerous stories of conflicts of interest every day."

Meanwhile, Bulgaria came under the spotlight for corporate fraud on Wednesday as Bulgarian, German and Swiss authorities uncovered an international crime scam involving €7.5 million worth of EU pre-accession funds and bogus sausage-making machines.