Is the EU biting off more trouble than it is worth by embracing Bulgaria and Romania, asks Daniel McLaughlin.
Organised crime, corruption and war criminals are three of the main problems besieging the European Union's plans for expansion into the Balkans.
Brussels gave Romania and Bulgaria the green light yesterday to join the bloc in 2007, and told Croatia to plan for the start of accession talks in April next year.
But all three nations face accusations that they are unwilling or unable to solve chronic issues that the EU will not welcome into the bloc along with its new members.
Romania's new President, Mr Traian Basescu, was elected last week on a pledge to crush the corruption that has flourished since the 1989 revolution, and became almost synonymous with the Social Democrats (PSD) who ruled for most of that time.
After beating the PSD candidate, Mr Adrian Nastase, at the polls, Mr Basescu said he would attack graft at all levels, and so boost efficiency in politics and business and foster a confidence in investors that the rules of the game in Romania are clear and consistent.
He also promised to bolster the independence of the media and the judiciary, two areas that came under pressure from the previous government, and end the practice of giving loans on favourable terms to firms with proven loyalty to the administration.
Romania has also been told to slash subsidies to a metals industry that is a big, but decrepit, employer, and to boost security at what will be the EU's eastern edge come 2007.
The EU has reserved the right to postpone accession for a year if Bucharest fails to fulfil its obligations, but many people - Mr Basescu included - believe the accession process has already been compromised by Brussels' hunger for expansion.
"The EU granted Romania 'market economy' status last year in spite of several serious issues, and there are huge issues still to be faced regarding justice and home affairs," said Mr Mark Percival of the independent Romania Think Tank.
"It is clear that Romania's accession is much more on the basis of commitment than achievement, and there seems to have been a watering down of the rules," he claimed, adding that several "chapters" of accession negotiations had been closed "before Romania was really ready, because of the political will to bring in Romania in 2007."
As well as coveting a market of 22 million new consumers in Romania, Mr Percival said Brussels seemed keen to get enlargement over with as quickly as possible, given the internal wrangling that the process has produced on issues like the EU constitution and the Common Agricultural Policy. While Romania tackles the hydra of corruption, neighbouring Bulgaria faces another daunting foe: organised crime.
"Who can deny that today organised crime dominates certain segments of the Bulgarian economy?" the US ambassador to the country, Mr James Pardew, declared this month. "Organised crime leaders flaunt their immunity from the law openly."
He claimed that mafia groups had killed more than 30 people during his posting in Sofia, and no one had faced charges, and that there had been no successful prosecutions against major drug bosses or counterfeiters.
Mr Martin Dmitrov, an economist at the Institute for Market Economy in Sofia, said organised crime might actually be less of a problem for eight-million-strong Bulgaria than crippling inefficiency that encourages corruption and hinders investment.
"Membership in 2007 will improve things here," he told The Irish Times, "because the conditions in which organised crime flourishes would find it tougher to exist in a free and open area."
He said Bulgaria's crime problem was probably no worse than Croatia's, but it is not mafia bosses that Zagreb has been ordered to catch by an impatient EU. Instead it is Gen Ante Gotovina, regarded in Croatia as a hero of the 1991-5 war, who stands between the nation of 2.2 million and the start of accession talks next April.