The European Commission (EC) had frozen funding under not one, but two European Union operative programmes, until the culprits involved in the National Road Infrastructure Fund (NRIF) controversy are punished, a “high-level governmental official” told Sega daily.

Before the sixth no-confidence motion against the Cabinet was debated in Parliament on July 30, several ministers, lead by Deputy Prime Minister Meglena Plougchieva and PM Sergei Stanishev, had been denying that the EC had frozen funding under the operative Transport programme. “Now, it becomes clear that not only under that programme, but also under the operative Regional Development programme, Bulgaria was deprived of access to funding for roads because of the controversy in the National Road Infrastructure Fund,” Sega said.

The frozen funding amounted to nearly 800 million euro under the Operative Programme Transport  and more than 340 million euro under the Operative Programme Regional Development. Another 150 million euro under the Ispa pre-accession programme were also frozen. Thus, the total amount of funding frozen, which Bulgaria risked losing, was 1.3 billion euro, Sega said.

Since January 2008, NRIF had been completely banned from operating with EU projects. It also had no right to organise tenders, sign contracts or pay any money. Unlike NRIF, the two executive agencies deprived of accreditations by the EC, are only partially banned from dealing with EU money. The agencies could launch tenders for EU projects, but could not sign contracts. EC would not fund any contract, signed during the period the agencies lacked accreditations, even after accreditation is restored. Still, such projects could be funded by the state, Sega said.

Plougchieva is expected to present the Cabinet an action plan for completion of the EC’s recommendations, including specified deadlines. The deputy PM supposed that Stanishev would appoint new management of NRIF this week and the fund would start functioning normally, Sega said.