The failure of the cabinet with the Recovery and Sustainability Plan (RPS) is spectacular. This was stated by Stanislav Mladenov, a municipal councilor from the Local Coalition group "BSP for Bulgaria". and deputy-chairman of the Standing Committee on International Cooperation and Tourism, European Programs and Projects. According to him, due to the deep political crisis, Bulgaria will miss the opportunity to absorb more than BGN 2 billion of European funds and will lose them irretrievably. And only the large infrastructure projects in Sofia and the rest of the municipalities in the country could to some extent reduce the loss of funds under the PVA and operational programs, reports the press center of BSP-Sofia.
"Since the procedures for large projects take quite a bit of time, we must direct our attention to smaller opportunities, the implementation of which could fit into the time frame until 2026, commented Stanislav Mladenov. - We may have such in the project for the Western arc of the ring road, the construction of which should start any moment. The household waste processing plant is also a good option in this direction. Why should the Metropolitan Municipality not create a program that would enable the implementation of renewable energy sources on the roofs of the buildings of municipal enterprises?! During the balance commissions, the directors of the three municipal DCCs accepted very well the idea of building electricity production systems on the roofs of the buildings. Such projects may be included in the RAP as complementary investments similar to those now launched - for self-use electricity storage batteries with an electricity production component.
According to Stanislav Mladenov, nothing can compensate for the failure of Bulgaria in terms of defense and operational programs. He noted that the "Innovations and Competitiveness" Directorate to the Directorate General "European Competitiveness Funds", which is the managing body of the Innovation and Competitiveness Program and is the structure for monitoring and reporting on the PES, works extremely poorly. "It is quite obvious that they do not put any care and there is no organization for the work to go as quickly and optimally as possible, he commented. - I will immediately support this statement of mine with an example. The delay in the program for the circular economy is extremely large, according to which they failed to conclude contracts with small and micro enterprises for half a year. This happened only a few days ago. There are two reasons for this delay - incompetence of the current management and indolence and lack of any desire to help Bulgarian business. In both cases, the measure that would lead to change is one - change of managers who work inefficiently".
Stanislav Mladenov added that the situation is similar with the program for the implementation of renewable energy sources for household consumers' own needs. "This is the government's much-touted renewable energy program for homes, he explained. - The design of this program was done extremely incorrectly, the assessment has been stuck for a long time and it is not at all clear when the first results will be available on it. The same applies to the program for the so-called adapted working environment of the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy. There are really many projects on it, and their evaluation has been going on for six months now and the end is not in sight. The failure of the caretaker government on the PVA is indeed quite obvious and urgent measures are needed in two directions - renewal of the staffing and management of the structures for monitoring and reporting of the operational programs and improvement of the design of the measures themselves and of the evaluation process. It's all a matter of organization and good management. 3 years ago we saw that it was possible to cope with the demands. Then the process went smoothly and the absorption of funds was very good. However, the experts were replaced and this led to the enormous delay and, accordingly, to the failure that is surely, unfortunately, to come.
Stanislav Mladenov also noted that Bulgaria has a number of failures on all topics related to energy efficiency. "The energy efficiency procedure for private beneficiaries from the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works did not meet the expected interest from citizens, he said. - The reason is in the application conditions that were prepared. They narrow down the pool of potential candidates. This automatically generates surpluses, which we return to Brussels. And why should these surpluses not remain in the Bulgarian economy?! To preserve them, we must look to the municipalities. Let's see where with large infrastructure projects we can compensate for these deficits".