A political row between Bulgaria’s current and former governments has erupted after Prime Minister Boiko Borissov alleged that the former environment minister concealed letters from the European Commission warning that the country was at risk of losing EU environmental programme funding.
 
Borissov told a January 24 2010 news conference that the activities of the state had been "sabotaged" by the concealment of warning letters that had, in effect, told the previous government in Sofia to "stop stealing".
 
Environment Minister Nona Karadjova said that important letters exposing significant problems in the management of operational programme environment funding had been hidden.
 
Borissov’s Government took power in July 2009 after defeating the tripartite coalition that had been in charge of the country from 2005.
 
Bulgarian National Radio quoted Borissov as saying that there had been four warning letters, two about the environmental operational programme and two about the Ispa programme.
 
Karadjova said that the January 24 news conference had been called in the light of a letter from the European Commission sent on January 8, expressing concern about delays in implementing programmes and in the low rate of the absorption of funds. There were suspicions about the transparency of 10 projects.
 
Dnevnik said that the letter, written by EC director-general for regional policy Dirk Ahner and received in Sofia on January 13, said that the EC would pull the plug on ecological projecs unless the Bulgarian Government adequately outlined by the end of January the measures being taken by the Environment Ministry to ensure effective spending of the financing.
 
Karadjova said the two letters from the European Commission have been kept in secret as they were not registered at the ministry’s records and she only learnt about them later on.
 
At the end of October 2009, the Environment Ministry ordered municipalities to suspend payments under the programme until it revised all contracts that had been signed.
 
The investigation found that the price tags of 12 municipal water infrastructure projects were significantly higher than market prices and would have to be revised, Karadjova said.
 
The list includes the controversial project to build a water and sewerage system and a waste water treatment facility in Lyulyakovo village with a population of 2500 for a cost of 40.5 million leva.
 
Another five projects will be stopped completely.
 
Payments could be reduced on the 157 contracts to provide technical assistance in preparing landfill site and water infrastructure projects estimated at a total of 150 million euro.
 
The Environment Ministry was to send Brussels a reply on January 25 containing information about screening performed on projects and financial update proposals.
 
Speaking to Bulgarian news agency Focus, Denitsa Zlateva of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, former adviser to the then-deputy prime minister in charge of EU funds management Meglena Plougchieva, rejected allegations that the correspondence had been concealed, saying "it’s strange that we should have sabotaged the operations of a new government in February when we didn’t know who’s going to come to power."
 
BTA said that in a written statement, former environment minister Djevdet Chakurov said that no letters from Brussels had been concealed during his tenure and that all letters had been duly answered to prevent loss of financial resources.
 
He said that his ministry had drawn up a plan for correcting 24 water infrastructure projects funded under the Operational Programme Environment.