Romania torpedoes Croatia's EU accession

The Romanian Foreign Minister Teodor Baconschi has threatened to approve EU membership for Croatia only if the country is subjected to the same cooperation and control mechanism in the area of justice as Romania. The daily Evenimentul Zilei sees this as unjust: "Both Teodor Baconschi and [President] Traian Băsescu say the EU would be acting unfairly if it were to couple Romania's accession to the Schengen Zone with its fight against corruption and judiciary reform, or in other words the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (MCV). But only in the case of our Croat neighbour can we talk of unfairness. Romania, which hasn't brought a single corruption trial to conclusion, wants to avenge itself by imposing the MCV on Croatia - a country that even had a former premier who was suspected of taking bribes from a bank arrested in Austria . ... The government in Bucharest is annoyed because rather than being able to use the Schengen accession to convince voters in the 2012 election campaign they will have to pay the price for their mistakes like the inability to free politics and the judiciary from the grip of local mafiosi clans."

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