[size=75:1wwwcaa8]novinite 10 March 2010

Belgium: Bulgaria, Romania EU Entry was Mistake, Lesson

Europe has learned its lesson after the hasty accession of Romania and Bulgaria and won't repeat that mistake, Belgium's state secretary for European affairs, has said.

Speaking for the Romanian newspaper Romania Libera, Olivier Chastel stressed that the new EU hopefuls, led by Croatia, will not be accepted in to the bloc unless they fully align their legislation with the European laws.

Belgium, which will take over the presidency of the European Union in the second half of this years, taking over from Spain, has not encouraged in no way Croatia's hopes that it can wrap up its accession negotiations before the end of the year, Chastel said.

Belgium's state secretary for European affairs mentions a number of stumbling blocks on the path of the Western Balkan countries efforts to become the next EU member states, including Croatia's protracted border dispute with neighboring Slovenia and Macedonia's name dispute with Greece, which will stop Brussels from viewing all them as a bloc.

“The European Union won't repeat the generous gesture it made in 2004 with the accession of ten countries, eight of which came from the former communist bloc,” the Belgian representative said.

He refused to comment claims by diplomats in Brussels, who say Sofia and Brussels want the European Commission to keep an eye on Croatia by imposing the same special monitoring mechanism, to which they were subjected after joining the European Union on January 1, 2007 owing to shortcomings in justice reform and dealing with corruption.

Any failure to redress the problems means that surveillance will continue, a process which resulted in Bulgaria being deprived of hundreds of millions of euros in potential funds.