Brussels warns Bulgaria over EU funds mismanagement

Bulgaria may lose some €11bn of EU funding because the European Commission does not trust the country’s mechanisms for managing the European money from which it benefits as an EU member, EURACTIV.bg reports.

Corruption and deficiencies in the management of funds by Sofia have prompted Germany and Austria to call for cuts to the funding allocated to Bulgaria, which joined the EU in January 2007. The country’s accession treaty does indeed provide for such a sanction in case of mismanagement. The European Commission has already frozen funding under all EU pre-accession aid programmes (Phare, SAPARD and ISPA) in recent months on suspicion of fraud and embezzlement, with anti-fraud office OLAF carrying out several investigations in Bulgaria. 

The toughest sanction discussed by EU diplomats is the triggering of article 7 of the Nice Treaty, which amounts to freezing Bulgaria’s EU membership, the Bulgarian weekly ‘Capital’ announced. Then Sofia would lose its voting rights in the EU Council. There has been only one similar sanction in history – against Austria in 2000, over the participation of the far-right party of Joerg Haider in the Austrian government. 

But the financial sanction is the more realistic, diplomats said. “At the political level there is large support for the idea of freezing the EU funds until 2013,” a German representative said in Sofia. 

Trying to buy time, the Bulgarian government announced its intention to create a new agency responsible for control over the EU funds. The new body will be led by the newly appointed Deputy Prime Minister Meglena Plougchieva, exclusively in charge of EU funds. 

Another challenge for Plougchieva, who took office on April 22, will be to improve communication between Sofia and Brussels. Plougchieva disclosed that correspondence from Brussels was often ignored by Bulgarian officials. The problem was endemic and a sign of both negligence and corruption, she said. 

Danuta Hübner, Commissioner for European Regional Policy, who met Meglena Plugchieva last week in Brussels, said that first important milestone in her future work will be to prepare and deliver good compliance assessment reports in the coming months. The Commissioner stressed the need to improve the handling of public procurement and the management of contracts, her spokesperson told EURACTIV. 

Enlargement Director General Michael Leigh gave Bulgaria a final deadline of 16 June to prove that it abides by the EU rules while dealing with its funding, the daily ‘Dnevnik’ wrote. The measures Brussels expects to be implemented by the Sofia authorities include sacking several high ranking officials who have proved to be incapable of working with Brussels. 

In June the Commission will publish its final reports on its monitoring of Bulgaria and Romania. Depending on progress, sanctions can be imposed on both countries. 

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