The parliamentary Committee on European Affairs and European Funds Oversight has presented its Report on the Management of the EU Funds. The committee has made a preliminary assessment of the results and the effects of the EU funds absorption in Bulgaria nearing the end of the Cohesion Funds programme period 2007-2013.

The Chair of the Committee, Monika Panayotova, focused on the main issues of the report, stressing on the overall progress achieved in the management of the European funds and the positive effects of the investments, realized with these funds, for the beneficiaries. She underscored the innovative value of the model called “WE”, a model that takes into account the particular needs, the very investments and their results. She also made recommendations for the next Programme period covering the years 2014 – 2020.

The Report explores the implementation of 14 programmes that comprise a budget of 11, 75 billion Euros. The Report shows a sustainable speed of contracting and payments on seven operational programmes, where the contracting had reached 95 % of the overall budget (7, 58 billion Euros) and payments of 31 %, towards 31 October 2012.  Among the successful projects the report mentions stage 1 and 2 of the construction of the Sofia Subway, the integrated project for improvement of Hisarya water sector, Sofia’s south part of the beltway, Holcim Bulgaria, Ltd and the Information-Administrative Center of the National Assembly.

The President of the National Assembly, Tsetska Tsacheva, has noticed that the parliament’s contributions and in particular the ones of the European Funds Committee with respect to introduction of European style political thinking should be praised. She stressed that this committee is among the best performers in the parliament, showing a non partisan approach in its work and supporting the dialogue.

Tsetska Tsacheva also mentioned that as a new EU member country Bulgaria was still facing challenges but would use all the knowledge accumulated so far to learn from past mistakes in order to reach better results in the future. She has underscored that the end of 2012 and 2013 represented a key period for the country. If Bulgaria shows successful by achieving its high targets of absorption of EU funds in 2012 that will be a good ground for the 2013, which is the last year from the current programme period, she added.