Although many jurnals worry that "negotiations (with Turkey) will start on schedule but be long and tough", only few people rememeber at this stage that Romania's accession to EU has followed a long and difficult way:

• Romania was the first Central and Eastern European country to have established official relations with the European Community. The bilateral agreement on Romania's inclusion in the EC's Generalised System of Preferences dates back to 1974, and another Agreement on Industrial Products was signed in 1980.
• We would like to remember here that Romania submitted its application for EU membership on June 22, 1995, about at the same time with the other ten countries that already joined EU in 2004. In March 1998 accession negotiations started with six candidate states: Hungary, Poland, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Cyprus.
• On October 13, 1999, the Commission recommended EU Member States to start negotiations with Romania, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Malta. This proposal was officially endorsed by the Member States at the European Council of Helsinki, on December 12, 1999. Romania officially started accession negotiations on February 15, 2000.
• Although accession negotiations with Bulgaria and Romania started in 1999, around the same time as with the ten countries set to join the EU in May 2004, these two countries have not yet been given the green light. The EU government leaders at the Copenhagen summit of December 2002 did not consider Bulgaria and Romania to be ready, although they did acknowledge the considerable progress both countries had made so far:
• Bulgaria did meet the political criteria, but it still had much to do to strengthen the judiciary, combat corruption and cross-border crime and eliminate discrimination against the Roma minority. Economically, Bulgaria was not yet able to compete with EU market forces. It also needed to ensure transparent public procurement procedures and protect intellectual property rights better. The country was told to improve its energy supply strategy and to decommission four reactors of the Kozloduy nuclear plant. Equal treatment of men and women still needed to be enacted in law. Finally, Bulgaria needed to adopt stronger environmental legislation. Parliament also criticised the continuing discrimination under law against homosexuals.
• Romania fulfils the political criteria as well, but corruption remains a serious problem. Economically, the country would also not be able to compete with EU market forces yet. Little progress has been made on the free movement of goods and people and Romania lacks the administrative capacity to enforce new environmental legislation. Energy policy has been inconsistent. Although border control and migration policy have significantly improved, the capacity for border management needs to be reinforced. The weakness of the administration in many important sectors is still a cause for serious concern. In its reports Parliament has repeatedly pointed to the abuse and neglect of children in Romanian state institutions and the problems of street children and child trafficking, but the country has since taken important steps to improve the treatment of children.
• In view of this situation, the EU government leaders decided in December 2002 in Copenhagen to continue the accession negotiations with Bulgaria and Romania and to intensify the efforts to prepare them for entry into the EU, by 2007.
• Romania concluded the EU accession negotiations in December 2004.
• The country has signed the Accession Treaty in April 2005.
• Therefore, after about ten years of struggling to implement judiciary, economical and political reforms, after five years of negotiations with EU, appears to be right on track to become a member of the EU on 1 January 2007.
• In 2004 the European Commission gave Romania the "functioning market economy" and recommend that Romania and Bulgaria are fit to join the EU bloc in 2007 if they implement agreed reforms especially in justice.

Well, nobody can say this was/is easy!!!

At this moment Romania is an accession country and it is evaluated to be on track for 2007 accession to the European Union.