Commission Challenges Bulgaria, Romania on Judicial Reform

The European Commission's latest reports on Bulgaria and Romania under the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism, CVM - which monitors their progress on judicial reform and corruption - contain good and bad news for both countries.

Although the reports, issued on Wednesday, said the two states had made some progress in some areas of their judiciaries, they said more work needs to be done for the monitoring, which exists only in these two EU members states, to end in 2019, when its mandate expires.

Two countries will be assessed again by the end of next year.

Both governments chose to welcome the reports as generally positive in terms of the progress they have made since January 2017, when the Commission issued its last assessments.

"The report is positive, objective and clearly defining the positive trends and achieved results," Bulgaria's Ministry of Justice said on Wednesday.

Justice Minister Tudorel Toader also hailed the report on his country. "It ... underlines the progress we have made since the last report in January 2017. It stressed a lot of the progress we made," he told journalists just after the report was published.

However, the Commission also said the overall pace of justice reforms in 2017 had stalled and expressed concern over challenges to judicial independence.

Despite Bulgaria's diplomatic efforts to put an end to the CVM mechanism, the Commission has made it clear that the country will remain under monitoring at least until 2019.

It recalled its last report on Bulgaria in January 2017, when 17 specific recommendations were issued for the country to fulfill its benchmarks.

According to the Commission, Bulgaria has made progress on some of the recommendations, including the election of a new...