Geoffrey Van Orden: There is Rampant Corruption in Croatia

In this BBC panel Geoffrey Van Orden raises concerns about the Croatia's rampant corruption and states that its premature acceptance to European Union may mean that the EU hasn't learned its lessons from the earlier cases such as Bulgaria.

BBC link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/bbc_parliament/newsid_9687000/9687604.stm

(see video at the bottom)

transcript:

Geoffrey Van Orden:

There were very good reasons why Bulgaria should have joined when indeed she did. But if you remember, in 2007 there were problems and question marks about dealing with organized crime and corruption and a reform of the judiciary, and matters of that nature. And we were very optimistic and hopeful that once Bulgaria was, if you'd like, inside the club, that they would take strong steps to overcome those difficulties. Now, one of the great disappointments has been inadequate attention to those problems. And I'm not sure that we have fully learned the lessons from that recent enlargement.

Although the question of Croatia seems to be done and dusted, the fact is the same concerns are expressed today about Croatia. And there is rampant corruption. You do have a politically appointed judiciary, and there are any number of other problems. And there's organized crime, which the Croatians haven't yet dealt with. So we haven't properly learned the lessons.

The point is that the enlargement process is essentially a political process. We go through all this elaborate procedure of objective criteria and everything, but actually at the end of the day it is a subjective political judgment whether of not the European Union enlarges.