Ministry of Environment and Water: “There is no risk of EU Sanctions for the Garbage in Sofia”

"There is no risk when it comes to garbage in Sofia, as well as when it comes to the situation with waste management in the country. The reason is in what we have accomplished so far and in what we plan to accomplish. Sofia overcame the critical moment and ensured stable waste management. We also work on taking the waste which has been packed in bales in facilities out of the capital.

The procedure of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) will come to an end in days. All of this gives us reasons to think that we take the necessary measures which are in line with the EU directives and in line with our legislation, after presenting the additional information to the European Commission, we believe that there will be no reason for imposing sanctions". This was stated by Chavdar Georgiev, Deputy Minister of Environment and Water in an interview for BNT.

"I suppose that to this moment European Commission and the Environment Directorate in particular have not been convinced in what time limits the undertaken measures would be completed" Georgiev added.

Georgiev emphasized that there has been created a joint group working actively on taking all the waste out of Sofia and the main solutions until now are Silistra, Shishmantsi and Harmanli.

According to Sofia municipality the deadline for the completion of the system is 2011. Certain elements would even start working before this deadline. "In my opinion this is realistic and with the right organization it could even be shortened. Until then the capital is guaranteed the depot in Suhodol. We are now negotiating with another municipality for taking part of the garbage there", Georgiev summarized.

Last Thursday the European Commission sent warning letters for two separate occasions in regard with the misadministration of EU laws in the environmental field.

The first case concerns the Waste Framework Directive and Bulgaria's failure to create an adequate system for domestic waste management in Sofia.

Bulgaria will receive a final written notice about the misadministration of the EU Waste Framework Directive. The Directive puts the member states under an obligation to encourage reducing, recycling and reusing waste and prohibits dumping, disposing and uncontrolled dismantling of waste.

In October 2007 the Commission sent the first written notice due to insufficient measures for creating a complete system of installations for domestic waste management in Sofia. After a careful examination of the answer of Bulgarian authorities the Commission still thinks that the situation is unsatisfactory and has decided to issue the final written notice. EC's conclusion of the analysis is that it remains unclear whether Bulgarian government would perform sustainable management to all domestic waste in Sofia municipality with no concrete deadline for negotiating of the new system.