site.btaBulgaria Ranked in the Middle According to NGO Sustainability Index

Sofia, August 19 (BTA) - Bulgaria ranks in the middle, according to the NGO Sustainability Index for 2013, Lyuben Panov of the Bulgarian Center for Not-for-profit Law said at the BTA Press Club on Tuesday. Bulgaria is ranked 9th among 29 countries. It is behind all EU countries but Slovenia. Russia and part of the former Soviet republics are also ranked behind it. For the past two years Bulgaria has had a score of 3.3 given that the best score is 1 and the worst - 7. According to Panov, this is indicative of stagnation and lack of development.

The index shows the development of the civil sector of 29 countries from Central and Eastern Europe and Asia. For a 17th consecutive year it has been analyzing and assigning scores to seven interrelated dimensions: legal environment, organizational capacity, financial viability (where Bulgaria gets the lowest score - as much as Kazakhstan), advocacy, service provision, infrastructure, and public image.

The protests, the environment of confrontation between civil organizations and the government - are the main factors influencing the score.

Regardless of the adopted Strategy on Support of Civil Organizations, none of the measures contained in it has been fulfilled. Work should have begun on 14 of all 20 measures but no results have been reported, said Panov.

The legal environment deteriorates: a medium of uncertainty has been created and this is confirmed by a proposal of the leader of Order, Lawfulness, Justice, Yane Yanev (then MP) that the members of management bodies of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) should declare their personal income and property.

The state has not had enough courage to introduce order in the financing models. For 20 year now it has not found an answer to the question of what its expectations from the third sector are, MEP Tomislav Donchev said. In his opinion, a solid barrier should be erected against the possibility that parties and state institutions perform genetic engineering in the third sector.

Deputy Justice Minister Petko Petkov said that all good decisions in the judicial branch have been taken namely on proposals by the NGO sector.