Atlantica - 01.12.2006, Síða 11

AT L A N T I CA 9
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And Then There Were 27
Has it really been two years since the signing of
the Treaty of Accession? The what? You know, the
treaty calling for Romania and Bulgaria to officially
join the European Union.
Yes, it has. As of 1 January 2007, the former
communist nations will be sending their own
bureaucrats to Brussels, joining the other 25
European Nations, increasing the EU’s population
by 30 million to 490 million, and stretching the
EU’s eastern borders to the Black Sea.
“This is the genuine and final fall of the Berlin
Wall for Bulgaria,” the Bulgarian Prime Minister,
Sergey Stanishev, told reporters in September,
after the European Commission announced its
decision.
But not everyone is dancing in the streets.
With ten new members having joined the EU in
2004, mostly from the former Soviet bloc, western
European nations have been holding their breath,
fearing a wave of economic migrants flooding
their borders from the East. The admittance of
Bulgaria and Romania only adds to this fear.
With weak criminal justice systems and charges
of corruption, Romania and Bulgaria lag behind
the eight other former communist nations that
joined the EU in 2004. The European commission
has imposed stiff restrictions on the former
Warsaw Pact nations, warning them that if reforms
aren’t instituted, Romania and Bulgaria “would be
excluded from core areas of the EU” such as justice
and home affairs, reported The Guardian.
But the commission’s report stated that the two
nations had made significant strides in reaching
EU standards. Plus, Romania and Bulgaria belong
to NATO, and supply troops in both Iraq and
Afghanistan.
Jose Manuel Barroso, the commission’s
president, told the EU’s parliament that Romania
and Bulgaria’s membership would be “a historic
achievement on the path to reunification of our
European family.”
Next on the list of hopefuls is Turkey. But with
a suggested freeze on EU ascension, plus a EU
constitution that has yet to be adopted, it appears
Turkey will have to wait to join the clan. EW
009 airmail Atlantica 606.indd 9 20.10.2006 9:07:43