Barrosso: Corruptie kan toetreding Kroatië blokkeren (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Brussels is sifting the political focus onto Croatian internal reforms as a potential barrier to speedy EU entry, while brushing under the carpet its own problems with institutional capacity after the constitution failure.

"The key to the speed of [enlargement] is very much in the hands of Croatia," European Commission chief Jose Mnauel Barroso said after meeting Croat president Stipe Mesic in Brussels Wednesday (6 December).

"It is sometimes important to set a date so we can focus our efforts, but at this stage I cannot commit the commission to a date, so I will not do it," he added, saying Zagreb must catch up on ethnic minority rights, judicial rights and "corruption" first.

The remarks differ from Mr Barroso's statement on 25 September that the EU can only take in Croatia after it has a new Treaty, because the current EU pact only makes provisions for 27 commissioners, covering Romania and Bulgaria only.

"There's no change - that position [on the EU Treaty] still holds good," Mr Barroso's spokeswoman told EUobserver Wednesday. "But he didn't say that today. He gave a very clear message to Croatia on reform."

For his part, Mr Mesic repeated that "Croatia is determined to become the 28th member of the European Union," adding that "Any slowdown of enlargement would be equal to questioning the entire [EU] project."

On Tuesday, Mr Mesic had told NGO Friends of Europe that "too much has been invested" into EU accession preparations in war-scarred Croatia for it fall prey to EU enlargement fatigue or constitutional wrangles.

Zagreb's foreign office has already prepared a legal solution to the EU institutional problem, proposing that small insertions to its EU accession treaty could remove the need for wider EU Treaty reform prior to enlargement.

Analysts also point out that Brussels ever-more-frequent mentioning of "corruption" as a Croatian problem ignores independent reports by NGO Transparency International that it is the least corrupt of the Western Balkan states and less corrupt than Romania.

Meanwhile, Mr Barroso's EU colleagues are less shy of dangling dates in front of Zagreb, which had originally hoped to join the EU by June 2009 in time for the next European Parliament election and new commission appointments.

European Parliament president Josep Borrel told Mr Mesic on Tuesday that 2009 should remain as the target date, Balkan agency DTT-NET.COM reports, while enlargement commisisoner Olli Rehn on 1 December said "the end of the decade" is a realistic aim.