Grain growers who are planning nationwide protests against Ukrainian farm imports have formally declined to meet with Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov on Saturday, the government leader said on Bulgarian National Television's weekly political talk show Panorama on Friday night. Denkov expressed his support for a National Assembly resolution earlier in the outgoing week to lift the ban on Ukrainian wheat, maize, rapeseed and sunflower seed imports, which met with disapproval from some Bulgarian farmers.
Denkov said sunflower and unrefined sunflower oil are the only Ukrainian products with which Bulgaria has had a problem. The government is ready to support those farmers who would be adversely affected by the resumption of imports from Ukraine. The Prime Minister noted that the real problem has been supplanted by general demands which have little to do with reality.
According to Denkov, the flooding of the coastal resort of Tsarevo showed that the government has no systematic disaster response policy and almost always reacts post factum. Therefore, one of the most important tasks after the expected Tsarevo report will be to devise a system of measures to mitigate the effects of disasters.
Discussing the government's first 100 days, Denkov said the cabinet's performance is currently assessed as good, but it is the final assessment that matters. The EU Cooperation and Verification Mechanism for Bulgaria and Romania has been closed, and inflation has dropped back to the level before the Ukraine war. This kind of things warrant a positive current assessment of the work of the Bulgarian incumbents, the Prime Minister said.
/VE/
