Eurasia Press & News
The European Commission as rejected a request by Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev to send European officials and diplomats to help the country’s state administration in its handling of EU funds.
In a letter, obtained by the Dnevnik newspaper, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso told Stanishev that the new institutional mechanisms demanded by the Bulgarian prime minister were improper for an EU member state.
According to Barroso, the other countries in the bloc were experiencing an “assistance fatigue” and the Bulgarian government should first show concrete and visible result to motivate its partners to send in more experts.
Barroso said Brussels was ready to continue to help Bulgaria but believed that this did not require the creation of the structures proposed by Stanishev a month ago. Instead, he said that Bulgaria should enhance current technical monitoring and cooperation, increase political dialogue and set results-oriented goals within the monitoring mechanism that has been in place ever since Bulgaria’s EU accession. Barroso pointed out that this stance is shared by other member states.
Government members told Dnevnik that they would would not abandon the idea of appointing foreign experts to “problematic” administrative units, a proposal they claim has been warmly welcomed by both the member states and the Commission.
The letter reiterated an opinion Barroso voiced at his meeting with Stanishev on 5 March in Brussels, when the Bulgarian prime minister first made his proposal, reports Dnevnik.
In his letter, Barroso outlined Brussels’ expectations ahead of the next monitoring mechanism report, due in the summer. Bulgaria should draw up an effective programme to arrest suspects in corruption and organised crime investigations and streamline the judicial process. It should also reform the penal code and improve the performance of the Supreme Judicial Council.
Stanishev’s European issues advisor, Maria Pinto, who is the author of the proposal, said the requests made to the member states differed from those made to the European Commission.
Stanishev asked Siim Kallas, the EC vice-president and the commissioner for administration affairs, audit and anti-fraud, for cooperation in three areas – appointing experts to advise on the handling EU funds, training of Bulgarian administrators by their colleagues in Brussels and internships with the European Commission for Bulgarian experts to acquire EU funding management practices. Pinto said had Kallas had thrown his support behind all these ideas.
