Sofia EU-funding Will Be Cut Says Deputy PM Pekanov

A working meeting with the Mayor of Sofia Yordanka Fandakova and her team was held in the Council of Ministers on June 29. "We addressed the problems we find in the distribution of European funds in the country, which directly affects its development," caretaker Deputy Prime Minister for European Funds Atanas Pekanov said.

"Five of the six regions of our country are among the poorest in Europe. Sofia region is not among them, but continues to receive a disproportionately large part of the funds and money will be reduced," added the deputy PM.

Pekanov and his expert team pointed out that the administrative keeping of Sofia in the South-West planning region is a serious mistake for the country's overall strategy.

The majority of EU capitals are separated into separate economic regions. Only Bulgaria continues not to follow this approach in order to guarantee more funds especially for the capital.

The decision not to remove Sofia district from the South-West region by the previous government for the next programming period bodes additional problems and risks the money for the other settlements in the South-West region.

According to Pekanov, a sustainable model of financing infrastructure projects has not been established in the capital and to some extent it has been taught to receive a "free lunch".

The European institutions have been telling us for years that this must stop and that the money they give us must go to cohesion, and not as a priority for our only region, which is doing a little better.

Accordingly, it should look for better and more sustainable models to finance itself to a greater extent with its own revenues.