EU/Bulgarien/Rumänien

The Coun­cil adopt­ed the fol­low­ing con­clu­sions:
” Reaf­firm­ing its ear­li­er con­clu­sions, in par­tic­u­lar those of 15 Sep­tem­ber 2008, the Coun­cil wel­comes the Inter­im reports from the Com­mis­sion on Progress in Roma­nia and Bul­gar­ia under the Coop­er­a­tion and Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Mech­a­nism and ful­ly shares the analy­sis of the Com­mis­sion con­tained there­in. The Coun­cil notes the con­tin­ued good lev­el of co-oper­a­tion of Bul­gar­ia and Roma­nia with the Com­mis­sion and the oth­er Mem­ber States.

Recall­ing the impor­tance of the polit­i­cal will to take the nec­es­sary steps, the Coun­cil wel­comes the reaf­firmed com­mit­ment expressed by Bul­gar­ia and Roma­nia and acknowl­edges the efforts made by these two Mem­ber States to make the progress need­ed to meet the objec­tives set under the mechanism.

The Coun­cil encour­ages Bul­gar­ia and Roma­nia to inten­si­fy their efforts in the com­ing months by tak­ing all nec­es­sary steps with­out delay, in par­tic­u­lar with regard to areas high­light­ed in the con­clu­sions of the Inter­im reports, in order to con­sol­i­date progress already made and calls upon them to achieve sub­stan­tial and last­ing results. In the light of the above, the Coun­cil looks for­ward to the Com­mis­sion reports to be tabled in the sum­mer 2009. The Coun­cil will con­tin­ue to pay care­ful atten­tion to devel­op­ments in this area.” 

Source: Coun­cil of the Euro­pean Union