Politics

According to Slobodan Radovanović, the police have uncovered exactly what happened on the day journalist Slavko Ćuruvija was murdered.

“It is a matter of days before the citizens of Serbia will hear who committed the crime and why, who fired the shots, and who was watching and who offered logistical help and why the murder of Ćuruvija took seven years to solve.” Special Prosecutor Slobodan Radovanović told daily Politika.

According to the daily, the answers to these questions are already known and the names of the perpetrators will be released to the public shortly, in addition to a legal process against those responsible for the murder of Ćuruvija.

Top EU and Romanian officials have reacted with trust and caution to the European Commission report on Tuesday that confirmed January 1, 2007 as the date Romania and Bulgaria will join the EU.

In its last such report, the Commission took into consideration the progress registered by the two countries and said it trusted they’d be ready to assume all the rights and obligations of member states at the beginning of next year. But it also proposed a set of measures to push Romania and Bulgaria into further reform in key areas.

EC President Jose Manuel Barroso
The head of the European Commission voiced Brussels’ determination to implement a mechanism to check further progress in the two countries, eyeing the process of reform in the fields of justice, fight against corruption and organized crime. “EU rules provide a set of complex measures to allow the evaluation of risks”, he said.

The Bulgarian government has to remain focused and pursue further reforms, this was Jose Manuel Barroso's, President of the European Commission and enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn's message. The two of them came to Sofia to hand in person the last monitoring report of the EC on the progress of Bulgaria. Yesterday, the European Commission announced that Bulgarian would join the EU on January 1, 2007 but under strict conditions.
"This is no time to relax. Today we celebrate but tomorrow we have to go back to work because there is a lot to be done," said Barroso after his meeting with Bulgaria's PM Sergei Stanishev.