MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Romania and Bulgaria voted into the EU

The European Parliament cleared the way for Romania and Bulgaria to join the European Union January 2007, although the debate was not extent of controversy.

Bulgaria received 522 votes, 70 nays and 69 abstentions while Romania, 497, 93 and 71. The vote opened the way for the second wave of EU's enlargement into the former communist block after ten countries joined May 2004.

However joining in 2007 is conditioned to the implementation of agreed political and economic reforms and could be delayed for another year if the two countries don't make effective fighting rampant corruption, strengthening their administration systems, beefing up border controls and introducing competition policy measures.

Romania with a 22 million population is seen as more corrupt than Bulgaria and its population of eight million.

Both countries missed the EU first enlargement wave into central Europe last May when ten countries joined the then 15 nation block because they were slow in introducing democratic and market reforms after the 1989 fall of the communist regimes.

Before the voting minority groups from the Popular and Green blocks asked to delay the issue until the executive European Commission publishes a report in November on how the countries are preparing for membership.

However the controversy has another side because Bulgaria and Romania are mostly represented by Socialist and Liberal groups, (Popular and Greens are almost non existent).

"We're not against their membership but we would have preferred the vote was taken in early 2006, a year before they join", said French Green Deputy Daniel Cohn-Bendit.

However the president of the Liberal Group argued that postponing the vote would have provoked "instability" in Romania and Bulgaria, slowing down the current process to reform the Judiciary branch and fight corruption.

Overall the French and their close allies the Germans were not enthusiastic about the enlargement vote since this could have a negative impact for Paris efforts to secure a "yes" to the EU constitution in a referendum scheduled for May 29.

"It seems to me that at a time when the French are debating on the constitutional treaty the signal given should not be one of scepticism about enlargement", said Pierre Moscovici a French Socialist Deputy.