Bulgaria Yet to Scrap Burgas-Alexandroupolis Pipeline for Good

Bulgaria is yet to conclusively abandon the Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline project, as the country's Parliament postponed the second reading vote on the proposal for next week.

"Let's cut off the second head of the dragon," right-wing Blue Coalition lawmaker Ivan Ivanov told his fellow MPs after the trilateral agreement for the construction of the project was denounced at first reading earlier on Thursday.

Pro-Russian Bulgarian Socialist Party MP Mihail Mikov argued that abandoning the project would lead to an increased unemployment.

The Parliament eventually decided to postpone the second reading vote.

The proposal for the denunciation of the agreement was submitted last month by the country's center-right GERB government.

The step comes after the expiration of Bulgaria's proposal from last year for a termination of the intergovernmental agreement by mutual consent.

The Bulgarian government adopted a decision to withdraw from the oil pipeline project in early December 2011.

Bulgaria's Council of Ministers noted back then that the project could not be implemented under the parameters set out in the inter-government agreement with Russia and Greece from 2007.

At the end of February, Bulgaria's Parliament confirmed the country's decision to abandon another key Russian energy project, the Belene nuclear power plant.

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