SOFIA (Bulgaria), October 14 (SeeNews) – Bulgaria’s government has started paying aid to farmers from its own budget to compensate them for part of the European Union aid, which the bloc froze earlier this year, local Darik radio station reported on Tuesday.
The European Commission froze in July 121 million euro ($163.4 million) in aid to Bulgarian farmers allocated under the EU's SAPARD pre-accession programme, aiming to halt alleged mismanagement of EU aid and curb rampant corruption in Bulgaria. The country, which joined the bloc in 2007, presented an action plan on SAPARD to the European Commission in July, asking for extension of the programme by one year until the end of 2009 and pledging to temporarily finance projects under SAPARD from the government budget.
The resumption of payments comes as a result of the successful completion of the action plan on SAPARD, Darik reported.
Aid on 30 projects under SAPARD has already been paid, including 13 projects worth a combined 1.5 million levs ($1.0 million/771,800 euro) that were to be financed from the frozen European funds, Darik reported. No timeframe on a possible unfreezing of the EU funding programme for Bulgaria is immediately available. The freeze affected 474 projects.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)
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