Romania’s accession in the EU was the only factor to keep the governing alliance in Bucharest united, according to a European Parliament report published in the wake of the country report the European Commission issued on Romania last month.

As the country prepares to join the Union on January 1 next year, the document, produced by the general EP directorate for foreign affairs, says that one of the two main groups in the governing alliance, the Liberal Party-PNL, has come to be controlled almost fully by oligarchs; that reformists are getting fewer and more politically isolated every day and that a campaign to reveal the deeds of

active politicians in the communist past of the country has become a weapon to discredit them.

The report says that while the oligarchy may be strong enough to keep a divided government in power Romania might not be correspondingly ready for the shock of EU accession, especially in the economic field.

And the report says that it is most probable that a likely round of early elections next year would result into a coalition government, yet the current pillars of the governing alliance, the Liberals and the Democrats, are unlikely to run on common lists.

The document says the power incumbent President Traian Basescu holds results from his increasingly strong popularity. Still, Basescu is unable to dissolve the Parliament easily in order to call for early elections, because his Democratic party would be the only move to seriously support such a move.

The Liberals have reacted critically to the report, with House speaker Bogdan Olteanu saying that the document was “a biased document that contains a series of untruthful information”

For his part, the head of the EP EU-Romania joint committee Guido Podesta said the document was “inadequate, adventurous and not relevant for the official position of the European Parliament”.