site.btaExperts: National Plan for Recovery and Resilience Needs to be Revised

Sofia, December 2 (BTA) - The National Plan for Recovery and Resilience (NPRR) should be revised. Representatives of environmental NGOs united around this opinion at a press conference in BTA on Thursday.

The plan, which has undergone five revisions and has been submitted to the European Commission, provides for 46 reforms to be implemented under 59 projects. However, reforms in key sectors such as agriculture and energy remain unclear, said Natalia Dimitrova, BlueLink's project manager. She clarified that final talks and clarifications are currently underway with the European Commission.

This year, the BlueLink project conducted studies on the national recovery and resilience plans of three other EU member states, Latvia, Portugal and Slovakia, as well as Romania when it comes to the energy sector. This comparative analysis and their good practices were submitted by the project participants to the Council of Ministers this summer, Dimitrova informed.

Energy expert Petko Kovachev noted that a series of reforms was indeed included in the plan and, with a working parliament, all of them could be adopted within a year, instead of 15-20 years in the future.

Kovachev noted however that the NPRR is not what it should be and lacks ambitious goals, giving as an example BlueLink's adopted proposal to reduce costs for the construction of gas pipelines, which should be eliminated completely at some point, as in addition to closing down coal-fired power plants, the EC plans to end the use of natural gas by 2035.

Kovachev pointed out obstacles to establishing a green economy in the country, including the lack of a long-term framework for decarbonization by 2050, the National Energy Efficiency Program, which failed mostly due to money theft, the ambiguity regarding the structure and management of the National Decarbonization Fund, issues related to closing down the coal industry.

The participants in the press conference recalled that almost half of country's energy is currently produced from coal, and the average salary in these regions is above the national average, but at the same time they are depopulating. Fortunately, many local authorities in these coal regions, such as the Stara Zagora and Pernik regions, have made good decisions over the years to reduce the carbon footprint of their production, Dimitrova explained.

Albena Simeonova, chair of the branch organization of organic farmers, also presented at the press conference the priorities of the so-called Fund for Modernization of Agriculture with a budget of nearly 900 million leva. Related areas include the short chains between producers and consumers of agricultural products, modernization of production, storage and transport of products, animal husbandry, etc.

The philosophy of the Green Deal is to help climate change victims overcome these problems, but the current version of the Plan does not contribute much to this, stressed Simeonova. Fifty percent of the investments have to be made by farmers, which in the current conditions is quite complicated and requires the National Recovery and Resilience Plan to be seriously revised, the expert said. DD/DT