There was a huge delay in payments under the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) due to the caretaker cabinets, the series of early elections and, we have no reason to hide, because of the record-breaking goals and the very philosophy of the Recovery and Resilience Plan. It was prepared by the caretaker government. At that time, the leading ministers were well-known figures such as Kiril Petkov, and the Deputy Prime Minister was Assen Vassilev, who led a large part of the processes. This was stated to Lili Marinkova in the “FACTI“ studio and the “Conversation“ show by Dimitar Gardev, former chairman of the European Affairs Committee in the National Assembly.
“The size of the RRP is clear – about 6 billion euros in nine tranches. The main structure of the plan is in line with the requirements of the European Commission. Each country can receive funds in stages according to a certain methodology. At one point, it turned out that Bulgaria was very late. Three years later, we had received only one tranche in the amount of 1.3 billion euros. There were three years left until the end of the program and it was clear that the funds could not be absorbed according to the original methodology. Then a regular government appeared. There is a very important point - the European Commission can only negotiate with a regular government. The requests are related to reforms and legislative changes. A caretaker government does not have a parliamentary majority, cannot amend the legislation and cannot fulfill such commitments. That is why a regular government with a stable parliamentary majority was sought,“ the guest added.
“Time was running out. Elections, caretaker governments and election campaigns were coming. There was a risk that a significant part of the funds would be lost. That's why we took action and renegotiated the plan, and Tomislav Donchev, as Deputy Prime Minister in the "Zhelyazkov" cabinet, has a lot of credit for this. We reduced them from nine tranches to five. We talked about this many times, because over a long period we had many meetings and joint work to actually ensure that Bulgaria could receive the funds. We held many meetings. Initially, we met with understanding from the European Commission, but from there they clearly showed that the money was tied to reforms. The message was: "Do something that we cannot do for you - first the reforms, then the money under the PVE, do the reforms", Dimitar Gardev also shared.
See more of the conversation in the VIDEO.