EU: Bulgaria Should Be More Serious about Its Fisheries

Bulgarian Minister for the EU funds, TOmislav Donchev, has asked the Finance Minister for cooperation on the issue. Photo by BGNES

The EU has warned Bulgaria that it might freeze the funding for the country's Fisheries, said a letter from the Permanent Representation of Bulgaria in Brussels.

The letter has been sent to the Bulgarian Agriculture Minister Miroslav Naydenov, the Finance Minister Simeon Djankov, and the Minister for the EU funds Tomislav Donchev.

The reason for the freezing of the EU funds, as stated in the letter, is the fact that officials from the Bulgarian Agriculture Ministry have not submitted their conformity assessments for the Fisheries requested by the European Commission.

The letter states that Bulgaria has not submitted any conformity assessments for Fisheries since 2007, while other sectors have periodically submitted their conformity assessments, which have been returned several times but have ultimately been approved by the European Commission.

“We know about the warning and we will try to submit the conformity assessment. We have sent a letter to Brussels, in which we state our action plan for preparing the assessment by the end of August this year,” Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Tzvetan Dimitrov, has told the Bulgarian newspaper “Sega”.

In his words, the European Commission has warned 16 more EU member states with freezing of EU funds for their Fisheries.

“I am stunned. Until the end of my mandate I was trying to make the Finance Ministry take up this task because even then the European Commission has been asking us to provide conformity assessment. It seems that the new government has not moved this task further but has held it back. This is why the European Commission reacts in this way,” the former Minister of EU funds Meglena Plugchieva said.

In her opinion, the delay in the Fisheries program is a result of the frequent replacements of executive directors.

The current Minister for the EU funds, Tomislav Donchev, said that in the long run, it would be better if the audits on the program are done by the Finance Ministry, adding that he already asked the Finance Minister Simeon Djankov for cooperation.

“I hope we will find a solution by the end of the year,” Donchev said.

The operational program Fisheries is one of the most entangled in Bulgaria. Three years after its start, the adopted amount of EU funds is only 0.28% out of EUR 106 M.

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