Sat, Nov 21 2009

Bulgaria to give up 55M euro in Phare aid

Wed, Nov 04 2009 09:16 CET byDnevnik.bg 535 Views 1 Comment
Bulgaria to give up 55M euro in Phare aid

Photo: Maria Subotinova

In a last-ditch effort to salvage a portion of 323 million euro in funding under European Union's pre-accession aid programme Phare, the Bulgarian government will relinquish more than 55 million euro, Regional Development Minister Rossen Plevneliev said.

The ministry will ask the European Commission to revoke 4.8 million euro for 212 contracts that breached programme rules. That left only two Phare-funded projects with no violations, according to ministry data.

At the end of October, the Cabinet said that it would give up Phare funding to the tune of 50.8 million euro for 10 road infrastructure projects riddled with flagrant violations. The 23 million euro already paid out for the projects will now have to be deduced from future payments, Deputy Minister Lilyana Pavlova said. The projects would be investigated but would be completed nevertheless because of their great public importance and the fact they are in an advanced stage, she said. A total of 40 million leva from the Budget have already been allocated to finish the projects.

Phare funding was suspended over systematic violations in the project approval and implementation stages. The Bulgarian government pledged to probe all contracts before the EC could make a decision on whether it would unfreeze any funding.

Source: Dnevnik

Comments

Anonymous SMILEY Wed, Nov 04 2009 18:25 CET
Inappropriate comment?

All a bit of a nonsense, when you consider that Bg has spent only about 1% of all EU money available to it during 2007-2013. Cosmetic PR politics - that is all this is.

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