At a regular sitting, held on November 23, 2011, the Committee on European Affairs and Oversight of the European Funds (CEAOEF) discussed the EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies by 2020 COM(2011) 173, included as item 13 of the Annual Work Programme (AWP) on EU Affairs (2011) of the Bulgarian Parliament. According to this EU document, member-states have a commitment to present their national roma integration strategies to the European Commission until the end of 2011.

The Bulgarian strategy was presented by Georgi Krastev, Deputy Chairperson of the National Council for cooperation in ethnic and integrating issues. He explained the development and coordination processes of Bulgaria’s National Strategy which is about to be finally inspected by a working group on November 28th, 2011.

CAEOEF’s Chairwoman, Mrs. Monika Panayotova briefly marked the key moments, laid down in the Committee’s position, which is going to be sent to EU’s institutions in the established non-formal political dialogue framework.

Firstly, CEAOEF recommends seeking cooperation with other strategical documents, such as European Comission’s “Europe 2020” strategy, Danube Strategy, etc. when realizing the national strategy for roma integration.

In conclusion Mrs. Panayotova underlined that CEAOEF’s position recommends increasing accountancy and transparency when spending resources from the EU or national budget associated with integration policies. This is the only way to gather accurate information for resources absorption and what is achieved in practice.