Former communist states Bulgaria and Romania made it into the European Union on New Year’s on Monday, a historic moment that drew thousands to midnight concerts although leaders warned that painful reforms were still needed.
As midnight struck marking the first day of 2007, hundreds of balloons with ”Welcome Europe” written on them rose to the sky from a 30 000-strong crowd in Alexander Battenberg square in the Bulgarian capital Sofia.
The addition of the two former Soviet bloc states brought the number of EU nations to 27 and gave the bloc a total population of almost half a billion people.
Romanian Prime Minister Calin Tariceanu spoke of ”a reason to rejoice, a moment expected for 17 years” since the fall of communism in 1989.
In a video message to both capitals, EU Commission President Jose Manuel Durao Barroso said: ”In welcoming two new members in the family, we know our culture, our heritage, will be richer, our mutual ties and our economy will be boosted.”
Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn added: ”They deserve congratulations for impressive reforms in strengthening democracy, modernising their countries, making their justice systems more efficient and independent.”
Behind the fanfare, though, the reality is quite different. The two Balkan countries, by far the poorest of the bloc’s states, will be under strict surveillance for the first three years of membership owing to their poor degree of readiness.
Their EU will be able to impose sanctions against the two for failures in their judicial systems or the management of Union funds and food safety.
Slovenia meanwhile, which had joined the EU in 2004, became at midnight there the first former communist state to adopt the EU’s common currency, the euro. The changeover went smoothly with some banks open even on New Year’s Day.
Bulgaria and Romania’s road to EU accession has been long, with repeated calls from Brussels for the two nations to crack down on corruption and organised crime in order to guarantee a properly working market economy.
But the mood overnight was full of celebration in the two new EU states.
Spectacular sound and light shows flooded the centres of Sofia and Bucharest, culminating on the stroke of midnight in a blaze of the EU’s colours, blue and gold.
”I’m full of hope,” said 23-year-old Bulgarian Radoslava Dimitrova, dancing with an EU flag round her shoulders. ”Something new, something better is going to happen to us.”
In Bucharest’s University Square, where Romanians have welcomed in every single New Year since the demise of dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu in 1989, the crowd waved sparklers under an EU flag the size of a 10-storey building.
”When midnight struck my heart leapt,” 14-year-old Romanian Alex Berha told Agence France-Presse. ”Me too,” chimed Alexandru Ghitulescu, also 14. ”I thought: ‘I can go to any EU country, just like that. Just with my ID card.”
But with enlargement fatigue gripping large parts of the bloc, the EU’s latest and poorest members are likely to be greeted more with a shrug than open arms.
Tariceanu acknowledged that the process of joining the EU had been a ”very difficult” one and said Romania must now ”get through the upcoming period of true integration”.
Bulgarian President Georgy Parvanov said in a speech at midnight (10pm GMT on Sunday) in Sofia that ”January 1, 2007 is one of the most important dates in our history” and that ”our future success as a nation will depend not so much on European funds as on our own work.”
Shortly before the midnight accession, Bulgaria closed down part of its only nuclear power plant in order to comply with EU safety regulations, sacrificing valuable energy exports.
Bulgaria and Romania will be Europe’s poorest members with gross domestic product per capita barely reaching one third of the European average, Eurostat statistics show.
The wealth gap with other EU nations has raised fears of a sharp rise in prices after January 1.
In any case, further enlargement is on hold, EU leaders had agreed December 15 in Brussels.
The decision has major repercussions for EU hopefuls in the Balkans such as Croatia, which is at the front of the queue and expected to join by 2010. – AFP
