After her visit to Bulgaria in March, Danish member of European Parliament (MEP) Margarete Auken left the country with the impression that the problems with the Bulgarian nature were very serious and linked closely to organised crime, which destroys the nature and transforms it into money, Konstantin Dichev of Green Balkans told The Sofia Echo on March 5.

“After she goes back to Brussels, her first job will be to meet European Union environment commissioner Stavros Dimas to request serious measures to be taken against the Bulgarian Government under the justice and home affairs chapter and for not abiding by its own legislation, since nothing can happen without the support of the three powers – legislative branch, executive branch and judicial branch,” Dichev said.

“Tourists come to Bulgaria because of your magnificent nature, but if you transform everything into a big swamp, they would simply stop coming,” Auken said after her visit to Bulgaria’s Rila Mountain on March 1 to observe the problems with Rila buffer zone, which was not approved for a Natura 2000 zone, and construction started there.
Auken is from the Greens/ European Free Alliance MEP group and a member of the committees on petitions, development and environment. During her visit to Bulgaria, she met non-governmental organizations and civil eco associations.

After Auken saw the area of Rila Mountain, where the company Rila Sport wants to build the Panichishte-Ezerata-Kaboul ski resort, which environmentalist fear would destroy the unique Seven Rila Lakes area, she said: “Maybe the part of your tourism will remain, in which the visitors go to the pubs and drink, but this is not very good for the country.”

“I saw that there are plans (for ski resorts) not only in Rila buffer zone but also inside the natural park. I don’t know what types of ski resorts it is all about, because with the climate changes, which are currently evident, this is not the cleverest investment I have seen. You destroy the nature and at the same time you will not have development of the ski resorts,” Auken said.

“What is happenning here cannot even be called capitalism. It is a very bad capitalism when you start losing valuable things,” she said.

The route of Auken’s visit to Rila problematic areas was supposed to pass by Panichishte resort. However it needed to be changed as residents of the surrounding villages gathered for a protest in Sapareva Banya on March 1.

About 4000 people supported the ski resort project “Panichishte-Ezerata-Kaboul”, Darik Radio reported. They stood against the attempts of environmental organisations to stop the construction in Rila Mountain and blocked the road to Panichishte for one hour between 9am and 10am. According to the locals’ posters “There is no future for the region without the project”. The rally was organised by the association Future for Sapareva Banya and supported by residents of the whole area and by mayors of Bobov Dol, Kocherinovo and Dupnitsa.

Sapareva Banya mayor Sasho Ivanov said he was responding to three lies disseminated by the environmentalists. The first one was that hotels would be built around the Seven Rila Lakes. “We would be the first to protests against this,” Ivanov said. No ski slopes would be built on the territory of the Skakavitsa reservation and in Rila National Park around the Seven Rila Lakes. The third lie that the environmentalists disseminated, according to Ivanov, was that there would be a road between Pionerska hut and the Seven Rila Lakes. “There is no such thing. Currently we are only rehabilitating a fourth-class road from Panichishte to Pionerska hut,” Ivanov said.