Bulgaria has not received millions from an EU fund due to late appointments
Bulgaria has not received any funds so far from the Modernization Fund in the lower union, as the country is not late for the year with the appointment of its representative in the Investment Committee of the fund, writes BTA.
This should happen as early as 2020, but it was done even in October 2021. Two at the end of July this year, at the initiative of the Ministry of Energy, the Council of Ministers (CoM) decided to designate the agency as a responsible structure. for the selection of projects for activities under the Modernization Fund. This was answered by the Minister of Energy Alexander Nikolov to a question from BTA why Bulgaria has not yet received funds from the fund.
The recognition comes after the European Commission’s press service announced that the eight EU beneficiary countries had received a total of 898.43 million. euro in the first year of operation of the EU Modernization Fund, but our site is not among them. Investments have already been confirmed in the Czech Republic (EUR 320 million), Estonia (EUR 24.59 million), Croatia (EUR 2.15 million), Hungary (EUR 34.28 million), Lithuania (EUR 28 million) , Poland (€ 346.40 million), Romania (€ 22.99 million) and Slovakia (€ 120 million).
“The current team of the Ministry of Energy is working actively to intervene the accumulated delay and to propose funding for projects for the next cycle in 2022,” added Minister Nikolov. At the moment, the work on the draft act of the Council of Ministers is in the advanced phase, which will determine the criteria and conditions for selection of projects for financing from the fund.
“It is also important to note that each country has a certain quota of funds in the fund, so the funds provided for our country will not be lost,” said the Minister of Energy. For Bulgaria, the quota is 5.84 percent of the total financial resource, he said.
The EU Modernization Fund was set up to support more than ten lower-income countries in their transition to carbon neutrality and the implementation of climate targets by 2030. The fund is financed by revenues from carbon trading . The beneficiary countries of the fund are Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, the energy ministry said.
The first payments were 20 in August 21, when the fund financed a total of six investment proposals in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, reminded by the Ministry of Energy.