The European Commission is showing signs of losing patience with Bulgaria, which has dragged its feet for more than two years in adopting reforms to continue payments under the Recovery and Sustainability Plan.
This became clear at the meeting on Monday evening between Finance Minister Lyudmila Petkova and EU Economic Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni prior to the Eurogroup meeting.
“Bulgaria can no longer postpone taking a political decision on the amendments to its Recovery and Sustainability Plan,” Gentiloni told Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Lyudmila Petkova, as quoted by the Bulgarian Finance Ministry.
Petkova has told Gentiloni that the caretaker government will move quickly to discuss and have the proposed changes to the recovery plan approved by the National Assembly.
Last week, Petkova called on parliament to give the caretaker government a mandate to negotiate with the European Commission on a recovery and sustainability plan so that the country does not lose billions of euros.
But parliament went into pre-election recess without fulfilling Petkova’s request.
Bulgaria only received the first instalment of €1.3 billion in 2022, after which it failed to meet its commitment to receive a second instalment of €635 million out of the €4.7 billion it expects from Brussels.
Bulgaria submitted its request for a second disbursement under the recovery plan in early October last year, but the European Commission froze the payment on the grounds that the reforms had not been adopted or had not been adopted properly.
To avoid losing the money, Sofia must implement several key reforms, including its climate neutrality roadmap, which was blocked 10 days ago by populist and pro-Russian parties in parliament that advocate preserving coal power.
The reason for the parliamentary scandal was the government’s report on the recovery plan, according to which Bulgaria will allocate €250 million for the reclamation of coal mine sites.
(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)
Source: euractiv.com
