About a dozen Bulgarian meat processing companies will have to pay back the subsidies they have received under the EU’s Sapard programme after the prosecution discovered absorption violations, State Fund Agriculture chief Kalina Ilieva told the Bulgarian Parliament's committee on agriculture on September 9 2009.

She was tight-lipped on either names or amounts.

At the end of July 2009, Bulgaria’s newly-appointed Agriculture Minister Miroslav Naydenov obtained from the European Commission (EC) an extension of the deadline and an extra probe into 98 companies, most of them in the meat processing industry.

Brussels was pressing for them to be entered into the debtors’ list and give back the 65 million leva aid they had received to support 101 projects.

The measure was imposed at the recommendation of the European anti-fraud office (Olaf) due to suspicion of irregularities.

The Bulgarian Government requested a second prosecution check on the grounds that European procedures allow for such an extension before financing is revoked.

In related news, the first major mission of the European Commission to examine rural development projects is scheduled to arrive at the end of September, Ilieva said.

The agriculture fund will seek Cabinet approval to hire 170 temporary employees to handle projects to get the agency going, she said.

To stave off further pressure on Bulgaria’s rickety national budget, Bulgaria has requested permission to tap into technical assistance funding to pay the salaries of the extra staff.

Source: Dnevnik.bg