site.btaPES President Stanishev Does Not Expect Approval of Most Operational Programmes before End of Spring

PES President Stanishev Does Not Expect Approval of Most Operational Programmes before End of Spring

Sofia, December 12 (BTA) - "In all likelihood, most operational
programmes will not be approved before the end of next spring,"
Party of European Socialists (PES) President and Bulgarian
Member of the European Parliament Sergei Stanishev said here on
Friday. In his words, the caretaker cabinet missed a lot of
chances and delayed the process of transmittal of the
programmes.

Stanishev spoke at a roundtable on "The Bulgaria-EC Partnership
Agreement 2014-2020: Opportunities and Challenges," organized in
 Sofia by the Bulgarian Socialists' delegation to the European
Parliament.

"Just a single operational programme has been approved so far,
and this is a major problem," Stanishev commented, noting that
work is needed at the national level to catch up on the delay.

"During its 14 months in office, the government rendered up by
the BSP [Bulgarian Socialist Party] carried out an enormous
amount of work for the absorption of the resources from the
ongoing programming period and for the preparation of the new
operational programmes and of the Partnership Agreement," the
PES President pointed out. "Within one year, 4,200 million leva
were paid out to beneficiaries," he added.

Iliana Iotova MEP said that the European Commission has approved
 40 out of a total of 585 operational programmes of the Member
States, and there is a huge delay. "Financing from the EU funds
did not start off in 2014, and this is not likely to happen in
2015, either. The first projects are expected to get off the
ground at the end of next year," she specified.

Stanishev called for a broad public debate on the projects
proposed by Bulgaria under the Juncker Plan.

He is not optimistic about the implementation of South Stream.
He described the scrapping of the project by Russia as "a heavy
blow" to Bulgaria.

Socialist MEPs Georgi Pirinski and Momchil Nekov and Zinaida
Zlatanova, who was deputy prime minister for EU funds management
 in the Oresharski Cabinet, also attended the roundtable.