Bulgaria had clear goals in the negotiations on the EU budget and achieved them
13 February 2013 News
“In the negotiations, it was important for us to accomplish three main objectives that we had set ourselves: for Cohesion Policy funds not to be reduced, to maintain the level of resources allocated to the agricultural sector and to be granted additional funds for the decommissioning of the old reactors at Kozloduy nuclear power station.” This was said by Minister Nickolay Mladenov at a meeting today on the EU budget 2014-2020 and the balance for Bulgaria.
The tools that made this achievement possible for Bulgaria, according to Minister Mladenov, included a number of important things that had been done in the country in the past four years. The first was the increased absorption of EU funds, which reached the percentages average for Europe. The second was our decision to focus on large and significant projects. The third achievement that assisted in the negotiations was the quality of the projects, such as the Sofia Metro, that we had built. They had become a good example for Europe. According to Mladenov, Bulgaria also had benefited from the fact that at a time of crisis with great hardship it had maintained strict financial discipline.
If to anyone these goals were minimalist, he should be able to say from where more funds could come, given that there were cuts in all areas of the EU budget, Mladenov said. He said that maintaining the growth of funds for agricultural policy, which is set out in the Accession Treaty, was questioned at the beginning of negotiations. "There was an insistence that the process of alignment with the other, older member states should be delayed and postponed for the future. Our country was able to defend a good plan,” Mladenov said. He said that Bulgaria, at the end of the programme period, would receive higher subsidies per hectare of land, compared to some countries comparable with it.
Bulgaria and three other European countries are the only ones that had an increase in funds for the next programming period, Mladenov said. Precisely because of that, Bulgaria was not receiving additional funds outside the programmes. There are countries where there are between 20 and 40 per cent decreases in Cohesion funds and precisely because of European solidarity, this instrument aims to reduce the impact on them. These are Hungary and Slovenia.
Minister Mladenov thanked everyone in the state administration, who had succeeded in defending the Bulgarian position.
The debate was attended by the Minister for the management of EU funds, Tomislav Donchev, and the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ireland, HE Bulgaria John Rowan.
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