This is the first time the EU has cut off assistance to a member. The freeze affects aid for farmers, road-building and large building projects, and the EU also banned two Bulgarian government agencies from handling EU funds. The freeze will last until “sound financial management structures are in place,” the EU said in a statement.
Reports on the progress of
But the European Commission reported that
The Commission had already frozen farm and road money earlier this year, citing fraud concerns. A local newspaper revealed in January that the head of the country’s road agency Veselin Georgiev had given contracts worth hundreds of millions of Euros to his brother’s company. The next month, Bulgarian authorities and Europe’s anti-fraud agency OLAF broke up a crime ring that had siphoned off €7.5 million of farm aid given in 2005 and 2006, before
Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev said, “There is a discrepancy between the political will, which is a fact, and the achievement of concrete results. The truth is
The opposition has proposed a no-confidence vote of the Socialist-led government, the sixth since it took office in 2005.
Bulgarian citizens seem to welcome the measures, reported AFP. “If EU subsidies have to go into bottomless pockets, let