Funding earmarked under the European Union pre-accession aid programme Sapard, which has been halted over suspicions of malfeasance and corruption, would stay frozen at least until September, Bulgaria's Deputy Prime Minister in charge of EU Funds Meglena Plougchieva told Bulgarian National Radio, as quoted by Dnevnik daily on July 7.

"In September at the earliest, Bulgaria can ask for an assessment from the European Commission (EC) of the ways in which [the country] is implementing the recommendations for [improved] control over the spending of funds under Sapard programme," Plougchieva was quoted as saying.

The assessment would be carried out by an outside auditor and would play a key role in the Commission's decision whether to lift the moratorium on payments for 624 projects, worth a combined 276 million leva.

Funding was frozen after an investigation by the European anti-fraud office (OLAF) found out that Bulgaria's State Fund Agriculture, in charge of the payments agency for Sapard funds, exercised next to no control over who received the money, Dnevnik said.

The 624 projects will be re-assessed to ascertain which projects could count on receiving funds under Sapard, the daily quoted Plougchieva as saying.

The new managers of State Fund Agriculture will also have to speed up assessments on 1100 projects that are due to receive 440 million leva in Sapard funding, Plougchieva said.

Bulgaria has asked the EC to extend the deadline for paying out Sapard aid by one year to end-2009, to compensate for the delay caused in the first half of last year, when no projects were approved because State Fund Agriculture had no chief executive, Dnevnik said. But unless the country moved fast with project assessments, the EC could decide against granting an extension, which would result in millions worth of funding being cancelled.