SOFIA (Bulgaria), July 4 (SeeNews) – Bulgaria is ready to finance on its own 10 road projects worth a combined 88.4 million euro ($138.9 million) for which the European Union has frozen co-financing over irregularities in the spending of funds, Deputy Prime Minister Meglena Plugchieva said on Friday.
EU froze co-financing for the 10 road projects from its PHARE pre-accession cross-border cooperation programme earlier this year. Financing under the EU’s SAPARD and ISPA pre-accession programmes also has been frozen until Bulgaria proves that it has the capacity to spend the EU money properly.
“Work on these projects will not stop and they will be completed with national financing if PHARE funding needs to be cancelled,” Plugchieva said at a meeting with representatives of the Bulgarian Business Leaders Forum, a local lobby group.
“These projects are extremely important and we will not let them fail,” she added.
Most of the projects are aimed at improving roads linking Bulgaria with neighbouring Greece and Romania.
Bulgaria plans to pour billions of euro into upgrading its infrastructure until 2015 to sustain fast economic development after joining the European Union last year. The country stands to receive over 11 billion euro from EU cohesion and structural funds until 2013.
($ = 0.6373 euro)
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