Ever since the European Commission decided to freeze about 800 million euro in funding to Bulgaria in 2008 because of alleged corruption, the issue has become an inseparable part of the public conversation of Boiko Borissov, before and since he became Prime Minister.

Portrayed as the villains who stole Bulgaria’s chances of benefitting from its EU membership, the former ruling politicians, mainly from the Bulgarian Socialist Party, were subject to constant criticism by Borissov which turned into an avalanche of verbal attacks after he won the July 5 elections.

For days, the media were full of news of the problem bequeathed to Borissov and the incompetence in the governing of the country in the past four years.

Naturally, the EU money issue was a forefront issue for Borissov, who won the elections with the main promise to restore EC’s trust in Bulgaria’s institutions.

In the first few days after winning the elections, Borissov said that the EC had assured him that it would unfreeze funds to Bulgaria under the EU’s Sapard agricultural aid programme. This was going to happen as a sign of goodwill to the new Government.

Soon after that, Borissov was contradicted by Michael Mann, spokesperson for Agriculture and Rural Development Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel.

On July 10, Mann said that nothing of the sort had been promised, and money would be unfrozen only after Bulgaria had dealt with the problems facing it.

As a result, on July 28 the EC sent a mission of experts to check on the State Agriculture Fund which manages Sapard funds. The mission is scheduled to end by August 31 and is expected to have a final say on whether the fund can manage the EU money in a transparent way.

After this difference of opinion on when the Sapard money would start flowing again, Borissov seemed to have decided to stay away from the issue for some time.
This changed on August 23 when Borissov told journalists that he was going to lead a top delegation to EC headquarters in Brussels in September to persuade the EC not to put on hold interim payments to Bulgaria under four operational programmes.

This was necessary after the EC again rejected the conformity assessments submitted by Bulgaria under the Technical Assistance, Transport, Competitiveness and Administrative Capacity operational programmes.

Although EC spokesperson Dennis Abbott said that the rejection should not be interpreted as a loss of financing, but merely a postponement of the interim payments, (which are 80 per cent of the seven billion euro funds Bulgaria is due to absorb) Borissov dubbed the news from the EC "horrifying"and requested meetings with EC president Jose Manuel Barroso as well as the Agriculture and Regional Policy commissioners.

The next day Borissov sent a message to Brussels. It was that "if Brussels wants Bulgaria to once again become the poorest and most corrupt country in the EU, then they should not unfreeze the funds and should bring back the previous government. We have taken all the measures they have asked us to, we are following the agenda and we are taking action, and that’s why I am sending the delegation to Brussels, to show them our progress".

A day later the person who under the previous government was in charge of co-ordinating Bulgaria’s work on EU funds, Meglena Plougchieva, rejected Borissov’s "horrifying" statement by saying that there was no danger of Bulgaria losing any of the funds, and that the country had until November 21 to work on the EC’s remarks on the four conformity assessments. She conceded that there were flaws in the previous government’s work which had led to the EC’s decision.

On August 26, her words were confirmed by Abbott, who said that there was no such risk and Bulgaria knew what had to be done so that the EC would accept the four assessments.

The reason why the EC had returned them to Bulgaria was the continuing serious weaknesses in the unified management and information system surrounding the EU-funded projects, which monitors the payment requests and funding distribution under the programmes.

Abbott said that Bulgaria was far from the worst EU member state in this regard, as there were a total of 32 assessments yet to be filed by other EU countries.
The only risk for Bulgaria was if some of the projects, after the payments started, were not good enough, Abbott said, adding that this principle applied to all EU countries.