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Romania (6) -- News -- July-September 2006
Romania, Bulgaria Cleared to Join EU
26.09.2006
Romania, Bulgaria Cleared to Join EU
EU membership, if formally approved as expected next month, will be a lucrative prize for both nations - two of Europe's poorest and most corrupt countries - rewarding them for a struggle over a decade and a half to forge open democracies and market economies.
'We will enter a period of certainty. Romanians will be European Union citizens like the Britons, the French and the Germans, with the same rights and the same obligations,' Prime Minister Calin Popecu Tariceanu said after the EU Commission declared the two Balkan neighbors ready to join the 25-nation bloc.
Bulgaria's premier, Sergei Stanishev, hailed the decision by the EU's administrative body as 'the final fall of the Berlin Wall.'
Romania (6) -- Analyses-- July-September 2006
The consequences
26.09.2006
If leaders of the EU nations sign off on the proposed enlargement in October, the bloc will expand to 27 nations and boost its combined population by 30 million to 480 million citizens.
Four countries _ France, Germany, Denmark and Belgium - have yet to ratify the entry of Romania, a country of 22 million, and Bulgaria, with 8 million, but are expected to do so soon.
Membership in the EU means Romanians and Bulgarians will be eligible for farm aid and other economic assistance, speeding efforts to raise living standards in a corner of Europe rich in natural resources but exploited by decades of totalitarian rule.
Both nations - staunch U.S. allies that have sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan - shook off communism in 1989. Since then, however, they have struggled to eradicate organized crime and corruption that fed a lucrative Soviet-era black market and expanded in the ensuing political and economic vacuum.
Many ordinary Europeans worry that for decades to come, they will have to fork over cash to help Bulgarians, whose average monthly wage is a paltry $205, and Romanians, who earn on average just $400 a month.
Workers from Bulgaria and Romania also will face restrictions in gaining access to other EU markets. Britain, Sweden and Ireland, which opened the door to workers from 10 other former communist states that joined the EU in 2004, are likely to set the strictest conditions.
'It won't be easy at the beginning,' said Constantin Munteanu, 70, a Romanian architect. 'But investors will come and will pay workers better.'
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Bulgarian