site.btaVazrazhdane: "It's Theft from State Budget"

Vazrazhdane leader Kostadin Kostadinov described the government’s newly announced package of measures to address fuel prices and provide inflation relief as “theft from the state budget.”

“For me, this is theft from the state budget and taking money out of people’s pockets only to hand it back to them as assistance, which is effectively theft,” Kostadinov told journalists in Parliament.

According to Kostadinov, the measure is absurd and the only solution is to reduce VAT on fuel. This would eliminate the need to consult the European Commission, which Prime Minister Rumen Radev has cited as the reason for the current approach, Kostadinov said.

“If you look at the agricultural sector, you will see that more than 90% of subsidies go to 800 legal entities and individuals who are connected to one another. They are not millionaires but billionaires,” he said.

He also criticised the proposal concerning the excise duty on propane-butane, calling it a lie. “We will carry out an analysis, but if we are talking about a reduction of EUR 0.44, that would mean a subsidy of 30% per litre, which simply cannot happen. In practice, this eliminates the excise duty, but they are not saying that,” Kostadinov said.