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European Union (Accessions) Bill

I am grateful to the Minister. It is important that each country be judged on its own merits, not least because, as I mentioned on Second Reading, there is the slightly odd arrangement whereby the mechanisms for assessing the two countries are different. We need to bear that point in mind. Progress is being made in tackling corruption and organised crime, but the importance of doing so cannot be overstated, not least in the context of accession to the EU itself, and of the implications within a single market once these countries have joined EU-funded programmes. We should bear in mind the possibility of very large sums of British—and other EU countries’—taxpayers’ money going in to Romania and Bulgaria at a time when they perhaps lack the administrative capacity to manage such sums in an acceptable way.