EU Funds Act to Ensure Sustainability, Accountability - Bulgaria’s Deputy PM

Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister Tomislav Donchev has suggested that 2015 is expected to be the strongest year in terms of EU funds absorption since Bulgaria’s EU accession.

In a Friday interview for the Bulgarian National Radio, Donchev vowed to put an end to administrative impunity in the sphere of EU-funded projects through an EU Funds Act.

“2015 is destined to be the year with the highest volume of payments and if we fail to stick to the most ambitious goals, the result will be a loss of funding. 2015 will be the last year of the previous programming period and the amount of money that we manage to pay out by the end of the year will determine the total amount paid out during the entire programming period. The sum of money that has to be paid out is impressive, at around 4.5 billion levs,” Donchev stated.

“Apart from that, we have the ambitious goal to start payments under the new programming period 2014-2020,” he noted, adding that the authorities planned to open procedures worth no less than 6 billion levs and to pay out no less than 1.1 blllion levs.

“We realize that this is a tough challenge,” Donchev acknowledged, adding that plans for 2015 envisaged processing double the amount of money processed in 2014 by the same number of public officials.

He informed that work on the EU Funds Act had been restored, stressing that the new piece of legislation was to guarantee the sustainability of the system and to ensure a balance of the rights of the participants in the process.