Bulgaria has been warned – European Parliament official

22:47 Fri 16 May 2008 - Petar Kostadinov

Michael Leigh. Photo: Assen Tonev

Bulgarian government has been warned that the country could lose its right to take part in European Union voting procedures, Elmar Brock, chairman of the Foreign Policy Committee of the European Parliament (EP) told Bulgarian-language Dnevnik daily on May 16 2008.

Other than that, Bulgaria could face financial and political sanctions imposed by the EU, Brock said. This would include the freezing of funds Bulgaria was entitled to as an EU member Dnevnik said.

For this to happen the EU would have to enforce Article 7 of the Treaty of Nice.

Brock was interviewed about a letter sent to Bulgarian authorities on May 8 2008 by Michael Leigh, Director-General of the EC directorate-general for enlargement.

In the letter, Leigh cited the lack of proper communication as an urgent issue for Bulgaria to address if it wanted the EC to resume payments under EU pre-accession programmes. The payments were halted as of January this year after a series of controversies involving serious conflicts of interest among high-level Bulgarian officials in charge of spending EU funds.

According to Brock, Germany was one of the EU countries that has warned Bulgaria. This was one of the reason why former Bulgarian ambassador to Germany Meglena Plougchieva was appointed as Deputy Prime Minister in charge of controlling Bulgaria’s use of EU funds.

The post was created on April 22 2008 and Plougchieva was given the full authority to enforce control over EU funds spending.

Comments

Comments by Fred Cameron - 07:24 17 May 2008
	I am very disturbed to read so many articles in your Newspaper about the corruption in high places and the problems you are facing with Brussels over financial support being withdrawn. As someone who has been buying property in Bulgaria nearly every project has been full of problems, legal purchase contracts have been worded to favour the Bulgarian Developers to the detriment of buyers and my lawyer describes then as totally unfair. Is this how Bulgariaa wants to show itself to the rest of the world? Does this mean that many of the improvements with infastructure , road repairs and new highways are likely to be put on hold. The fact is it seems so many of the people in high office are making things worse and holding up progress instead of seeing joining the EC an opportunity to change the things that can benefit the people. What I read about corruption and the number of prominent officials that been involved is very worrying to readers of your newspaper. My own advice to anyone buying property in LET BUYERS BEWARE because the situation in my experience is proving to be a disaster.It is not what I expected and it seems the position is getting worse.
Comments by John - 10:17 17 May 2008
	Freeze ALL funding. A messaeg needs to be sent to Bulgaria saying 'we really mean this'. It is not the only EU country with corruption problems (Italy, UK, Poland)but at these countries APPEAR to not tolerate it. Bulgarians need to get it into their head that it is not acceptable and the Politicians and mutre need to get a lot more sofisticated with their scams if they want to get rich (look at the Labour party of the UK for eg, hardly any of them got caught!)