LM Legal Services Blog

According to the draft of the monitoring report of the European Commission on Bulgaria (the official report will be published on 23 July 2008) the country’s progress is slow and more limited than expected. The fight against corruption is unsuccessful and Bulgaria does not demonstrate capacity for governing the European funds. The Penal Code is outdated and it is the reason for the overload of the judicial system, there are no results from the ongoing investigations, the administrative capacity of the judicial system is unsatisfactory and there are proofs of endemic corruption in the health and the education systems. Despite these, it is expected that the European Commission will not impose a safety clause on Bulgaria. However, it is expected that the commission will stop financing exceeding 1 billion Euros from the SAPARD and PHARE programs because of abuse of funds and corruption

The management of State Fund Agriculture leaves for Brussels to find out why the European Commission has put on hold 183 million levs from the SAPARD program for Bulgaria. One of the most common mistakes has been the fact that the applicants did not comply with the requirements of the program. Often farmers applying for subsidies for the purchase of equipment and animals gave 2 additional fictitious applications in order to present the fund with 3 offers, while at the same time the administration did not check the documents. Moreover, farmers made deals with importers of agricultural equipment who in order to attract business, provided each farmer with two fictitious applications on top of the real one.

Other malpractices have been revealed in the investment for village tourism. With the European money for small village hotels have been built a great number of enormous hotels in the resorts. For this reason only, Brussels has stopped about 8 million Euros for 10 projects.

It is expected that the Dimitar Tadarakov, the Executive Director of SF Agriculture and his deputy Vladimir Karamishev will resign.