Mark Gray: There is no Need for a Report from the EC for the Funds to be Restored

The European Commission does not need to draw a new report on the management of EU funds in Bulgaria in order to unfreeze the funding from SAPARD, PHARE and ISPA. That was made clear by the EC spokesman Mark Gray, answering a question by Portal: Europe today.

On July 23rd 2008 the European Commission published two Progress reports on Bulgaria - one on the six problem-raising benchmarks and another on EU funding management in our country. Due to their negative conclusions the Commission stopped the pre-accession financial aid for Bulgaria and banned both Paying agencies from managing European funds. "If Bulgarian government does not take urgent measures by November, the country may lose 650 million euros" the Commission announced in July.

The experts suggested that the paying agencies would regain their accreditations and the blocked funds would be de-frozen by a special EC Report. The experts thought the sanctions would be lifted by the same mechanism they were imposed. By November 23rd the Commission expects two reports on the road funding - one by KPMG and one by MF which could possibly lead to unblocking of ISPA funding. November 23rd is also the date of expiry of PHARE and November 30th is the dead-line for the operation period of ISPA and SAPARD. By the end of November it will also be clear if EC would extend SAPARD operation period.

"The Commission will make a decision about the funding on one of its sessions after the expiration of the dead-lines (which are different for the different programmes) and after the necessary assessments are made. To restore payments the Commission does not need to make a report to the member states."
This was Mark Gray's answer about the procedure of possible restoration of payments on PHARE, ISPA and SAPARD keeping in mind the Commission will not publish a report this year.

"My announcement yesterday only aimed to disprove the speculations that there would be a new EC report this year on the stopped pre-accession funds. What I can say is that there is a lot of work to be done by the Bulgarian side as well by the Commission. I can not comment on any possible results since no decisions have been drawn yet" Gray explained.

Yesterday he said for BTA that there will be new expert missions in Bulgaria in December after which "an interim factological update (of the reports) towards the beginning of next year" will be prepared.

Meanwhile another spokesman from the European Commission - Denise Albert (regional policy) commented for BNR that no formal decision could be expected on restoring ISPA payments before the beginning of next year. "The end of November is not the time by which Brussels would express an opinion on the ISPA funds" he added.