497 "Yeses" for Romania’s Adherence

With 497 votes for, 93 against and 71 abstentions, the members of the European Parliament have approved Romania’s adherence to the European Union, in Strasbourg.

GREEN LIGHT. 500 out of the 600 members of the European Parliament taking part in the voting, voted for Romania’s adherence to the EU.

The members of the Union’s Legislative have adopted the report for Romania, made by French socialist Pierre Moscovici, as well as the notice regarding the signing of the Adherence Treaty. Bulgaria has also successfully passed yesterday’s exam. 522 Euro-deputies voted for our neighbors in the South, 70 voted against and 71 abstained.

At the end of the voting, the authorities in Sofia, as well as the ones in Bucharest looked relieved, at least for the present. The adherence treaty calendar, approved in December 2004 by the big-guns of the European Union, is still valid, the treaty will be signed in less than two weeks time. A first monitoring report will be made public in the next autumn, and will show whether these countries continue the reforms in the rhythm asked by the Europeans.

NERVOUSNESS. Yesterday’s voting, which was supposed to be just a formality, proved to be one with actual emotions. Things got a little tensed in the night before, when the European People’s Party reunited, this being the party with the most members in the EU Legislative. At the end of this meeting, the party’s leader, Hans-Gert Poettering, announced that the EPP members have decided, with 92 votes for, 86 against and two abstentions, to ask for the delay of the voting regarding Romania’s and Bulgaria’s adherence. The ecologists in the European Parliament joined the EPP group, and their leader, Daniel Bendit-Cohn seemed very impetuous.

The two parliamentary groups reasoned their decision by invoking not only the problems in Bucharest and in Sofia, but also some communication problems between the two European institutions: the Parliament (the Union’s Legislative) and the Commission (the Union’s Executive). To be more precise, the Euro-deputies say they didn’t receive from the Commission enough information on the implications caused by the two states’ adherence on the communitarian budget. The cost of Romania’s and Bulgaria’s adherences has been estimated at 44.3 billion euros, one third of which is paid by Germany, and, for the countries that adhered to the EU last year, 40 billion euros have been awarded from the communitarian budget.

THE PROCEDURE. "The greens" and the conservatives have actually used a procedure maneuver. They said it was not a normal thing for the members of the European Parliament in the Legislative’s Budget Commission to present them the financial aspects of the expansion in 2007. They would have liked the members of the Commission to present these aspects directly to them.

The position of the two parties that, together, would have been able to endanger a positive voting targeted at an agitation in the two candidate countries. If the European Parliament delayed the voting, the Adherence Treaty couldn’t have been signed on the 25th of April, as it was planned, and even the adherence in 2007 could have been postponed. "Why should we vote now for such a long period of time, for 2007?", explained the ecologist leader, Daniel Cohn-Bendit. He said that the best solution would be to postpone the voting for November, after the monitoring reports regarding the activity of the two countries would be made public. In case the voting will still take place, the groups of the "greens" would prefer to abstain, because their intention is to say "No" to Romania’s and Bulgaria’s adherence, Cohn-Bendt said on Wednesday night.

However, the EPP didn’t ask anymore for the postponing of the decision regarding the adherence of the two states, the leader of the group saying he received all the wanted information and guarantees on the financial impact of the new expansion. This wasn’t the decision of the ecologists. They kept their opinion regarding the postponing, but abruptly changed their reason, mentioning the readiness level of Romania and Bulgaria. Daniel Bendt-Cohn said about Romania that, even though there have been some progresses made in the economical area, Romania still has a lot to make up for the press freedom and corruption. In these conditions, being supported by the ecologists only, the postponing motion has been unhesitatingly rejected.