Corruption and populism in Bulgaria.

IF for most Western Europeans and British people in particular, Bulgaria, a country with a population of over 7,600,000 is seen as an idea) place for holidays or retirement, the situation in the country shows little sign of comfort. Since the summer. Bulgarian cases of corruption have been put under the spot-light in Europe. These have become particularly frequent since Bulgaria became a member of the EU in January, 2007. The first signal came in July when the European Commission published a negative report on the state of the judiciary system in Bulgaria. This was followed by the unprecedented decision to withhold funds devoted to Bulgaria for reasons of mismanagement and suspicion of fraud. In the first report, the European Commission did not go as far as activating the Justice and Home Affairs safeguard clause in the Accession Treaty. This would have led to a situation of non-recognition across the EU of court decisions made in Bulgaria. Nevertheless, the Commission emphasized the numerous dysfunctions of the Bulgarian judicial system such as the failure to prosecute in a number of high profile corruption cases as well as murder cases. In recent years, Bulgaria has indeed been plagued by several targeted contract killings. One of the last ones occurred in April, when a former mafia boss, turned novelist, Georgui Stoev, was assassinated by unmasked killers in front of a busy bus stop in broad daylight after having tried unsuccessfully to convince some judges to take action on the basis of the information he gave them. There is no doubt that such cases create a general feeling of impunity for most of their perpetrators and are seen by the population as additional proof that nothing can be done.

On 24 July 2008. the European Commission announced the suspension of 486 million euros destined for Bulgaria while emphasizing that the money would be released if the country introduced proper financial control over the fund's use. Four months later, on 25 November the EU announced it was definitively depriving Bulgaria of 220m euros. The EU Enlargement Commissioner. Olli Rehn said somewhat diplomatically 'I regret this decision because Bulgaria is an economic success story, it's a very committed and constructive member state, but [...] we have to respect the rules of financial management and therefore there is for the moment no other option".

In Bulgaria, the initial reaction to the July announcement was of apparent dismay. The socialist Prime Minister, Sergey Stanishev - governing a tripartite coalition with the party constituted by Simeon Sakskoburgotski (1) and the DPS (see below) - even attributed the problem to a lack of communication between the European Commission and the Bulgarian authorities. In reality, the Commission's decision did not come as a surprise at all. After Bulgaria joined the EU, the Commission kept monitoring the absorption of EU funds in its subsequent reports. In Bulgaria, the Prime Minister had anticipated the report by appointing Mrs Meglena Plougtchieva, a well-respected former Ambassador to Germany, as Vice-Prime Minister in charge of controlling the use of EU funds.

Stories of mismanagement, fraud and corruption are indeed all too common in Bulgaria. The local mafia that prospers on drugs, human trafficking and other illegal activities seems to be untouchable even if, from time to time, well-staged police operations meant essentially for external consumption are launched by the authorities - most of the time without tangible results. A new development in the relationship between politics and the mafia occurred in the context of the last local elections when local mafia leaders engineered the creation of political movements aimed at presenting candidates. Last April, the Ministry of the Interior was alleged to have sent advanced warnings to some mafia bosses of police raids. After weeks of such allegations, the Minister, Rumen Petkov, finally resigned while remaining an MP. Only recently, on 20 October, was Petkov indicted for revealing the identity of an undercover agent working for the National Security Agency, a small charge bearing in mind the gravity of the allegations made against him.

More fundamentally, Bulgarian political analysts have sometimes objected to the insistence of the international community and of the European Union to press Bulgaria on the issue of corruption as, according to them, it feeds all kinds of populist discourses. The reality might be slightly more complicated than that. But before addressing the issue, a few words must be said with respect to Bulgaria's accession process to the European Union and its two main paradoxes.

The first paradox: never in the European Union's history have candidate countries been subject to such levels of scrutiny as Romania and Bulgaria. This scrutiny translated itself in the accession treaties of the two new Member States by the inclusion of possible suspending clauses, of general and specific nature such as the one dealing with Justice and Home Affairs. The general clause provided for a possible delay of membership of one year. Nevertheless, both countries were accepted on 1 January 2007 as Members of the European Union despite the fact that this accession process showed that they were not fully ready for EU membership. The main reason for this lies in the fact that the EU enlargement process as a whole was more driven by political reasons, i.e., stability in Central and Eastern Europe than formal technical criteria. This was even truer in the case of Bulgaria whose proximity to Serbia in the midst of the Kosovo crisis appeared as an ever more compelling reason to speed up its membership process. The second reason is most probably to be found in the complicated division of labour between the European Commission and the Council of Ministers during accession negotiations. The accession process for Bulgaria and Romania has shown the extent to which the Member States wanted to shy away from public opinion, which has become increasingly reluctant towards further enlargement of the European Union. This took the form of giving the Commission an extensive monitoring role on the process itself while knowing that membership for such countries was ineluctable. If there is no need to re-make history, one should keep in mind that the combination of the two factors might explain the precipitation that led to EU membership for a country like Bulgaria. To this, some observers would argue that membership was essential in order to consolidate the reformist elites vis-a-vis any temptation to a return or at least a deadlock situation with respect to political and democratic reforms.

The second paradox is that if EU membership is subject to an ever increasing number of conditions, also called 'membership conditionality'. once the countries join, conditionality loses most of its power. In other words and as an EU scholar put it, conditionality membership is a 'consumable power resource'. (2) Of course, once a country becomes part of the EU, failure to comply with EU law will trigger actions from the European Commission with possible sanctions, including financial penalties, being imposed by the European Court of Justice. But past experience shows us that this can be a lengthy and sometimes frustrating process.

The second question is whether the European Union is right to put such pressure on Bulgaria. The answer seems obvious. But some political analysis have underlined the fact that such insistence by the Western European elites on eradicating corruption in Bulgaria is feeding the populism in the country, which is certainly not a welcome development. This argument can be challenged on two grounds. First, it overlooks the fact that Bulgaria has a history of populism since the adoption of its constitution in 1879 when it achieved a measure of autonomy from the Ottoman Empire. Rather than creating a liberal political system that some of the drafters were calling for, it created a hybrid system of popular sovereignty and a powerful monarchy. As a result, and from this period until the Second World War, Bulgarian politics proved to be one of the most unstable and violent in Europe. The famous French journalist and traveller, Albert Londres noted, in 1932, how Sofia had become a "giant fire field'. (3) Second, if this argument holds true, the reverse is equally pertinent. It is because there is corruption in Bulgaria that it is so easy for any populist leader to use such an issue as a main political argument. Dealing with corruption would then considerably, in the long run, undermine such populism. It is certainly far from being the case. At present, the populist scene in Bulgaria is shared by two main leaders. On the one hand, there is Volen Siderov, the leader of ATAKA, a party close to the European extreme-right, who came second in the last presidential elections, to be beaten in the run-off by the current President, the socialist, Georgui Parvanov. On the other hand, Boiko Borisov, the current mayor of Sofia and leader of the newly created GERB, (4) tries to present himself as an acceptable moderte conservative leader playing with arguments mostly directed towards the so-called Turkish party, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS in Bulgarian) that plays the role of king-makers in Bulgarian politics. Even if the other parties have been reluctant to accept the DPS as a full coalition partner, it has played an important role as indispensable support for any majority. The legislative elections due next spring will without doubt settle the situation as far as the two leaders are concerned. All surveys seem to suggest that Borisov might well become the next Prime Minister, governing in coalition, at the very least, with the Socialists and ATAKA as no single party is likely to win a majority of seats in Parliament.

From a broader perspective, the situation in Bulgaria shows the extent to which the European integration process encounters tremendous difficulties when dealing with a country whose state institutions suffer from a lack of legitimacy. Paradoxically, the EU can only work with robust and legitimate state institutions. Without an efficient judiciary, there cannot be a proper implementation of EU law. The well-known procedure of preliminary references cannot work unless it is based on a close cooperation between the European Court of Justice and local judges who fulfill their responsibilities properly. In the short-term, the prosecution of only a handful of high-profile corruption cases might send the signal of the beginning of a reversal of the trend. In the more immediate term, both corruption and populism seem poised to continue to feed on one another.

Notes

(1) Usually referred as the ex-King (or Tsar) or Simeon Saxe-Cobourg. In 1943, at the death of his father, Boris III, Simeon was still a child. The country was then placed under a three-member Council of Regency headed by his uncle, Prince Kyril. In 1946, a plebiscite orchestrated by the Communists led to the overthrow of the monarchy.

(2) Karen E. Smith, 'The Evolution and Application of EU Membership Conditionality', in M. Cremona (ed.), The Enlargement of the European Union, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2003, p. 133.

(3) Albert Londres, Les Comitadjis (Le terrorisme dans les Balkans), Paris, 1932, p. 32.

(4) GERB or Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria.

Jean F. Crombois is Assistant Professor of European Studies at the American University in Bulgaria.