A LONG list of urgent reforms to combat persistent corruption, money laundering and human trafficking was demanded yesterday by the European Union as the price of its green light for the accession of Bulgaria and Romania.

The agreement to complete Europe’s absorption of every Warsaw Pact country outside the former Soviet Union will take effect on January 1, bringing the EU’s population up to half a billion, José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission President, said yesterday.

But the threat of sanctions, including withholding a quarter of farm and regional payments as well as refusing to recognise court judgments unless judicial independence is guaranteed, will hang over the two countries from Day 1. Bulgaria was also told that its aircraft might not even be allowed to fly into the EU area unless rapid improvements were made to aircraft safety standards and flight crew licensing before the end of the year.

Workers from the two countries will face restrictions in many EU countries, with Britain confirming yesterday that it will allow only gradual access to jobs after the public backlash against the estimated 600,000 arrivals from the ten countries that joined in 2004.

Senhor Barroso admitted that while both countries had made progress since failing to make the EU grade in 2004, there were still shortcomings.

The two countries must submit their first progress report after three months of membership, then provide six-monthly follow-ups. But the EU had left itself little room to manoeuvre by drawing up a treaty that allowed for accession on either January 1, 2007 or 2008.

It decided to extend its experiment now rather than delay a year and risk destabilising the reform process.

This seems more precarious in Bulgaria, which was set the greater number of targets yesterday, with six goals for judicial reform compared with four for Romania, and a host of warnings about slower-than-expected progress in other areas.

The commission report stated: “The legislative framework for the fight against corruption has been improved . . . however, there have been few concrete examples of investigations or prosecution or charges of high-level corruption.”

There had been “no successful prosecutions for money laundering” and there was “no systemic confiscation of assets of criminals”.

“Contract killings rarely result in successful operations and prosecutions. Illegal possession of firearms remains a problem. The number of cases prosecuted successfully related to trafficking human beings, drug smuggling, money laundering, counterfeiting of goods, currency and documents is still low.”

Romania drew criticism for failing to introduce legal aid or tackle “the Prime Ministry’s serious managerial shortcomings”. Progress was acknowledged in the fight against corruption, with 157 indictments against officials and the arrest of 30 customs officers.

But parliament’s attempts to block an integrity agency was condemned. There was also criticism of the treatment of the Roma minority.

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