Friday, July 18, 2008

News from Bulgaria - EU finally flexes its muscles domestically?

The EU has flexed its muscles in domestic affairs after a long time again. The EU Commission is withdrawing rights for two Bulgarian agencies to manage an amount of EUR500 mlj. EU funds. It means that Bulgaria will be punished for its endemic corruption and thriving environment of organized crime next week, writes EUobserver. If this punishment schema will work out it will create a precedent that should sound as a warning sound for corrupt officials in other EU countries.

Is it good news, one may ask? Yes! Siphoning EU funds for private and in most cases criminal needs is nothing particularly new. It was after Greece became the member 1982, that the ECC officials realized mismanagement of EU funds on grand scale. Greek precedent actually fostered the EU to create such filters as acquis communautaire and "white paper", that aspirant countries had to sign upon prior being accepted as members of the club.

Should follow the news now, look back into the Greek precedent back in the early 1980's and probably some new ideas come out of all this. In the meantime Latvian opposition may perhaps capitalize on the Bulgarian precedent in forthcoming weeks, to prevent the ongoing "capture of the state" by some minigarchic families in Latvia.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It won't work. The EU is punishing Bulgaria (rightly) but that won't extend beyond the Balkans. Brussels is too spineless to go after the "A-Team" -- and other CEE countries are not keen to put down "one of their own" that far. There is no backbone left in Riga nor Brussels.

Veiko Spolitis said...

You are probably right if we follow path dependent policies so far. However, it is always POSSIBLE to make a noise via their MEP's for example. Thus, the issue is for opposition MP' s and liberal politicians in Latvia to work if not in unison, then at least to work with their sister parties in EU, find collaborators and put Latvia into "the EU infirmery" for a while.

So AAA teams could start thinking:) They do not have to think a lot because of leniency of the opposition members, thus changing traditional patterns of behaviour is the best way to achieve inordinary goals, and also because TRADITIONAL APPROACH TO PROBLEMS WONT GIVE ANY TANGIBLE RESULTS FOR SURE!:)

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