Standart News

Deutsche Welle

The European Commission would allot 83 million euro for Bulgaria on the blocked funds under PHARE programme, reported the spokesperson of the European Commission, Mark Gray

By Yuliana Nikolova,
Secretary of the Council on the management of EU funds

- What is your explanation for the, so to say, unexpected decision of the European Commission to unblock the funds for Bulgaria?
- Let?s consider the period the report of the European Audit Office covers, after all it analyzes not the last three months but another period. Besides it has not been mentioned how much exactly the country could pay on its own funds and the suspended money has been unblocked applicable for the projects concluded by the two executive agencies. In simpler terms - the projects could conclude contracts till they had accreditation. On the contracts Bulgaria has not blocked money and has blocked the accreditation but paid in national funds. The current unblocking means that the national funds could be replaced by the European ones.
- Have you managed to achieve any organization in the management of EU funds or what you inherited has turned out to be worse than you expected?
- The efforts are collective. My first unpleasant meeting was in Enlargement General Directorate in line with the fact that Bulgaria refused to make an analysis of the faults made in the management of EU funds in the two executive agencies. Bulgaria sends tons of information to the services in the Commission but refuses to make a simple analysis - these are the faults we have found and they resulted from these actions, we offer you an approach for financial corrections, let?s come to an agreement and move forward. This has been the new thing which happened. There is a lot more things we need to do. Unfortunately, no matter how much we want we have not managed so far but the efforts continue towards restoring the accreditation in the central unit for financing. The effort is great and very ambitious.