The "corrupt" label

The daily Gandul complains that all Europe has always seen Romania and Bulgaria as a "poor and corrupt" tandem. "From an economic perspective and in the fight against corruption we are ahead of Bulgaria - despite the fact that in the past four years not a single court ruling has been passed in major corruption cases and that our judiciary is anything but independent. ... Independent reports show that the problem of corruption has steadily increased with the inflow of European funding. ... But it is [mainly] owing to incompetence that Romania has trouble managing the funds. ... Major European states like France, the UK and Spain will have to return millions of euros because they mismanaged European funding. The Greeks took money for non-existent olive trees, and the Italians for fictitious livestock. The British failed to hand over money to their farmers between 2005 and 2007. But they haven't been accused of corruption, a label that has stuck to Romania and which not a single European politician wants to get rid of."

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