site.btaGovernment Reports Improving System for Management and Monitoring of EU Funding in Bulgaria

November 12 (BTA) - The system for management and monitoring of EU funding in Bulgaria has been upgraded to allow greater transparency and more detailed reports. Details about th upgrade were made public by Deputy Prime Minister Tomislav Donchev Tuesday together with representatives of the government's Central Coordinating Unit.

"This is not an inventorying system. We have been adding functionalities all these years. All categories and contracts are public and one can generate an immediate and unfiltered report," Donchev said of the upgraded Unified Management Information System (UMIS 2020) . The new functionalities make sure that no state institution can conceal information: projects can be monitored from their inception with all who have been involved and the work they have done or not done, the Deputy Prime Minister explained.

He believes that as far as quality is concerned, the Bulgarian system is among the best in Europe.

Georgi Stratiev, head of the Central Coordinating Unit, said that the programmes funded by the Norwegian Financial Mechanism were added to UMIS 2020 in 2018. The platform currently allows monitoring of about 20 programmes with over 70,000 beneficiaries. Now potential beneficiaries can apply for EU funding via UMIS using a standard application form regardless of the operational programme the project falls in. Before, there were different application forms for each programme and that caused much confusion among applicants, Stratiev said.