On 16 May 2006 European Commission will release its latest report on the EU membership bids of Bulgaria and Romania. The report will include the Commission’s verdict on the proposed accession date of 1 January 2007. Corruption has emerged as the primary obstacle to EU membership in both countries. This In Focus section provides an overview of anti-corruption policy within the EU Accession process and includes recommendations for strengthening the anti-corruption dimension in future Enlargement rounds. Above all, TI supports mainstreaming anti-corruption in EU Accession policy, that is, the comprehensive application of an anti-corruption approach. It is also essential that rigorous anti-corruption standards are upheld in the EU itself, if not, standards may fall when a country accedes.

The Enlargement of the European Union to include the former Communist countries to the East began in the early nineties with the negotiation of the European Partnerships between the EU and the prospective Member States. At the beginning of the process, corruption was largely overlooked for various reasons.

First, at that time, globally, the damage caused by corruption was underestimated; the detrimental effects that it has on democracy were only beginning to be acknowledged.

Second, the EU itself did not have a comprehensive anti-corruption policy. So therefore when the Heads of State met in Copenhagen in June 1993 and sought to encapsulate in the Copenhagen Criteria the “European standards” that applicant countries would have to meet, they referred to consolidation of democracy and rule of law but not explicitly to the fight against corruption.

Third, the extent to which corruption would emerge as a characteristic of post-communist transition was also treated too lightly. The influence of legacies of Communism and the effects of transitional policies, such as mass privatisation, were miscalculated.

Corruption was first highlighted in Agenda 2000, the European Commission’s assessment of the 10 applicant countries’ development, published in 1997. Since then corruption has featured prominently in all the Commission’s annual reports on progress towards meeting the Copenhagen Criteria for membership of the Union.