We came with a clear request to dismantle the oligarchic model – this has been done from day one, gradually. The specifics presented by Minister Ivan Demerdzhiev today were quite comprehensive, apparently enough for Prime Minister Radev to request the recall of our ambassador to the UAE. I believe that it is the job of the control bodies and the Prosecutor's Office to react to the information provided. I was impressed by the creativity of these schemes – if this is what has happened, the Prosecutor's Office must step into its role and take action. Thus, Konstantin Prodanov from “Progressive Bulgaria“, head of the budget committee in the National Assembly, commented to bTV on the revelations of the Minister of the Interior regarding funds allocated to four companies for guardrails, which were used to cover the costs of over 30 flights of the leader of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms Delyan Peevski.
“The prosecutor's office is obviously not working well, the society believes that there are deficits there. That is why we started with the election of a new Supreme Judicial Council, we already have 11 nominations, the election of a new prosecutor general follows and then a complete reform of the judicial system“, he reminded.
Regarding the opposition's accusations that the state was left without measures for gasoline and diesel from the authorities, he specified: “It is never enough. Our first concern is not the treasury, but the well-being of Bulgarian citizens. We are talking about measures for over 330 million euros in total. By supporting agriculture and transport, we are trying to neutralize the negative effect of prices to some extent and prevent it from being transferred to transport and food.“
He commented on the introduction of an “inflation check“ of 50 euros for about 550,000 people: “The Social Assistance Agency organizes the list of these people. It is about supporting the most vulnerable, as a comparison, 230,000 people benefited from the measure of Gyurov's office, and now twice as many people will benefit. These measures will be in effect until the end of the year, for the next one we will probably use different buffers to react if fuel prices remain at high levels. We have foreseen specific subsidies and measures to support school transport and bus transport in general. There are also subsidies for ambulances. The situation is worrying in terms of fuel prices and the potential inflationary spiral.“
Regarding the accusations from GERB that the PB wrote the reports of the Court of Auditors, especially in the RIA part, and the words of Simeon Dyankov saying that the data we submitted for entering the eurozone are not correct, Prodanov specified: “The Court of Auditors is an absolutely independent body. We did not carry out the audits, but an external body did them. The current head of the Court of Auditors has a history with GERB. The main reason for assigning the audits to an external auditor was to obtain the most accurate information possible. Let's wait for the deadline for the RIA audit and then comment. It is crucial for citizens to have clarity about the state of a country at the moment, in the past and in the future.“
On the idea of updating the tax assessments of properties almost twice, unchanged since 2007, he added: “Bulgaria is one of the last countries in terms of the amount of revenue it collects from property taxes in the EU as a percentage of GDP - three times less than the average, which deprives municipalities of resources for public investments. The tax assessment for each dwelling will be updated, regardless of whether it is the first, third or tenth of a person. The tax assessment and its update will concern only the property tax, but not the garbage tax, which is actually a larger part of the obligation. If we do not fix the tax assessments, it will turn out in years that an apartment in the center of Sofia costs as much as an old car.“