We are leaving around €2 billion more in the budget for the next regular government, caretaker Prime Minister Andrey Gyurov said at a briefing at the Council of Ministers on May 4.
Andrey Gyurov, caretaker Prime Minister: “We are here today to present further proof that the caretaker government is leaving the state in a much better condition than it found it. We secured two very important resources for Bulgaria – time and money. When we took office at the end of February, the countdown under the Recovery and Resilience Plan was advancing at a pace that the previous parliament and government were not even attempting to catch up.
We had two tasks. The first was to submit a request for the fourth payment. The second was to save nearly half a billion euros from the second and third payments – funds that had been blocked due to the previous authorities’ political reluctance to tackle corruption. We achieved both.
At the beginning of April, we requested €900 million under the fourth payment. This in itself is not particularly dramatic, but it shows that when a government acts decisively and with determination, Bulgaria can still meet deadlines. More importantly, we did not write off €400 million that had been abandoned by the previous authorities. Today, 4 May, we could have received a final and irreversible ‘no’ from Brussels for those funds, because we lack independent investigations into corruption and into the Prosecutor General. We prevented that from happening, and those €400 million were saved.
After round-the-clock negotiations with the European Commission, Deputy Prime Minister Nedina and her team managed to secure an extension, thereby changing the final outcome. The government thus achieved something quite rare – time that was not lost, but regained. What will be done with it is now up to the new authorities.
The extension comes with a clearly defined task for the new government and parliamentary majority – a new Anti-Corruption Commission. Not a new sign on an old building, but an independent, genuine and much-needed fight against corruption in Bulgaria, including independent investigations into the Prosecutor General. Not reshuffling, not old faces in new roles, but justice.
The team of Deputy Prime Minister Yankulov prepared the two legislative drafts. They were approved by our government and are now where good intentions often end up – in the registry of parliament. There is a new majority, and we hope that with the time we have secured, we will not once again see and hear the old excuses.”
Maria Nedina, Deputy Prime Minister for EU Funds: “We succeeded in renegotiating two key reforms – the reform of the Anti-Corruption Commission and the reform concerning the investigation of the Prosecutor General. With the agreed amendments to the Recovery and Resilience Plan, we are postponing the deadline for the Anti-Corruption Commission reform, which was due to expire today.
The new deadlines, for now, safeguard €401 million by giving the new government more time and a broader horizon so that these measures can be adopted by parliament. We thank the European Commission for recognising that we are indeed in a difficult situation.
In practice, we have negotiated the shift of the Anti-Corruption Commission reform from the second and third payments to the fourth and fifth payments. The reform concerning the Prosecutor General, previously linked to the third payment, is being moved to the fifth payment, i.e. 31 August. We have received a positive opinion from the European Commission regarding these changes.”
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