EU Eyes Corruption in the Balkans

By Tony Barber
Financial Times

Slovenia's announcement last Friday that it is ready to lift its veto on Croatia's European Union entry talks gave a welcome boost to the EU enlargement process. Other than Iceland's decision in July to apply for membership, enlargement has been running into one brick wall after another in the past couple of years.

This is partly because of petty arguments such as the Slovenian - Croatian maritime border dispute (still unresolved, in spite of last Friday's breakthrough) which held up Croatia's talks. But it is also because of fatigue and disillusion in many of the EU's 27 member states, especially in western Europe, about admitting new entrants.

The lesson some countries drew from the entry of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 was that the EU had made a mistake in letting them join before they had met EU standards on tackling corruption and organised crime and on strengthening their judicial systems. These problems are so entrenched that EU foreign ministers drew attention to them yet again on Monday at a meeting in Brussels.

While praising evidence of modest progress in both countries, the ministers said: "The positive changes remain fragmented and have not yet produced practical results for Romanian citizens . . . The Council stresses the need for more substantial results in investigating, prosecuting and judging cases of high-level corruption and organised crime in order to secure lasting change in Bulgaria."

This statement has serious implications for Croatia's membership talks. For the Slovenian veto, enforced since last December, distracted attention from the fact that one of the biggest obstacles on Croatia's path to the EU is domestic corruption and organised crime. (There is also the question of Croatia's co-operation with the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague.)

Ivan Simonovic, Croatia's justice minister, contends that his country has stronger anti-corruption mechanisms than some EU members. Perhaps he is correct as far as concerns Romania and Bulgaria. In Transparency International's 2008 global corruption index, Romania was ranked 70th and Bulgaria 72nd, with Croatia slightly above them in 66th place.

But with the prevailing political climate in western Europe cool towards enlargement, it would be rash for Croats to think the EU will welcome them with open arms just because corruption and organised crime are a little less rampant than in Bulgaria and Romania.

There is a tendency in Croatia to assume that the country is self-evidently at the cultural and geographical heart of Europe - it was, after all, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire - and that entry into the EU is therefore automatic. But as a result of its experiences with Bulgaria and Romania, the EU sets the bar higher than it used to. This message will come into ever sharper focus now that Slovenia has lifted its veto.

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