07.11.2022
The European Commission approved the first request for a grant disbursement to Bulgaria under its National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) with a caretaker government in office. The amount is BGN 2.7 billion. The announcement was made at a briefing in the Council of Ministers building by Atanas Pekanov, Deputy Prime Minister for EU Funds Management.
“I am extremely proud to announce today that, just as we promised, the first disbursement of the grant under the Bulgarian Recovery and Resilience Plan was approved while this caretaker government is in office. A few minutes ago the European Commission informed that it had approved the positive preliminary assessment of Bulgaria’s first request for a grant disbursement in the amount of BGN 2.7 billion under the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF),” Atanas Pekanov said. He recalled that in recent weeks the caretaker government made every effort to enable this decision of the Commission to materialize. A vast amount of work has been done before and after the submission of the request for the grant, in the course of ongoing talks and discussions with the Commission services in the course of which various pending issues were settled and various documents were clarified, Atanas Pekanov explained.
“It had to be proved how and whether the goals set and the commitments made had been achieved following the reforms as carried out and the first steps as related to major investment projects. I thank everyone who worked energetically to prove to the European Commission that everything had been implemented properly and in keeping with the regulation. We owe the good news of today to that,” the Deputy Prime Minister commented. “The unprecedented short time that the assessment took is to be credited to colleagues from Central Coordinating Unit with the Council of Ministers and the National Fund at the Ministry of Finance and I sincerely thank them for that. This is an important step and a key step within the frame of the Bulgarian National Recovery and Resilience Plan, Mr. Pekanov said.
Today’s approval by the European Commission is a success for Bulgaria, the Deputy Prime Minister said firmly and added that the success should inspire us to work more and to strengthen efforts in the right direction. “In this sense, the country should go at a faster pace to build a stronger, sustainable and successful economy by means of major reforms and investments under the Recovery Plan and an additional incentive should be provided to us as a result of today’s important step forward,” he said. RRP grant disbursements are performance-based and subject to the investments made and the reforms implemented by the member states as laid out in their respective Recovery and Resilience Plans. The Bulgarian National Recovery and Resilience Plan contains a wide set of measures for investment and reform in twelve thematic components. It is worth about BGN 12 billion payable in the form of grants. The said first disbursement will make up about 23% of the total amount of the grants as committed to Bulgaria under the RRP.
