German press: EC report on Romanian justice warns on regress

A European Commission report due to be issued later this week criticizes regresses in Romania’s justice reform and fight against corruption over the past several months, because of which Bucharest risks losing already frozen funds unless it moves forward in this sector, Financial Times Deutschland reported on Wednesday.

The Romanian government must speed up justice reform and its fight against graft to compensate for regresses over the past several months, the EC report says, as quoted by FTD.

FTD sees it as a harder stance towards the Bucharest authorities as so far Brussels allegedly used to criticize Bulgaria more than Romania. In July 2008, the EC froze the payments of pre-accession funds amounting to some 486 million euro to Sofia while it suspended agricultural payments to Romania, which is due to receive 391 million euro. This amount is at stake unless progress is made in the justice sector, according to the paper.