Bulgaria's Vice President Iliana Iotova on the closure of CVM: The efforts of many Bulgarian governments have been crowned with success

"The closure of the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism of the European Commission is undoubtedly one of the best news for Bulgaria recently. The efforts of many Bulgarian governments, politicians, MEPs for all these 17 years have been crowned with success," Bulgaria's Vice President, Iliana Iotova, wrote on Facebook on September 15.

European Commission formally closes the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism for Bulgaria

Her comment was on the European Commission's decision to close the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism for Bulgaria and Romania. It was introduced for the two countries in 2006, before their accession to the European Union.

"Most importantly, one of the most vociferously put forward 'arguments' of some European partners for postponing Bulgaria's Schengen membership has been dropped," Yotova wrote.

Commenting the decision of the EC to bring the CVM to an end, Bulgaria's Prime Minister, Nikolai Denkov, said that another barrier to being equal with the other EU countries in every respect had been removed. Soon we have to remove the rest - to be accepted in Schengen and to join the euro area, he said, quoted by the government information service.

Parliament’s Speaker, Rosen Zhelyazkov, described the abolition of the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism as the result of the work of many governments.

Zhelyazkov described the closure of the monitoring mechanism as extremely good news.

Earlier today, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs ,Mariya Gabriel and Minister of Justice, Atanas Slavov, pointed out that the closure of the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism was a success and a recognition.