Pre-accession financing for Bulgaria and Romania: What lessons can be learned for future enlargements ?

In the European Parliament's Resolution on the Commission's 2007 enlargement strategy paper, adopted in July 2008, the European Parliament called for lessons to be learnt from previous enlargements and that in future the EU should act more rigorously when following-up monitoring and evaluation reports on progress achieved by the candidate countries, in particular regarding administrative and legal reforms, the ability of the pre-accession states to manage European funds and the rule of law in general. This study focuses on the main lessons learned from the management of preaccession funds of Bulgaria and Romania, providing related recommendations.