site.btaParliamentary Committee on Turkish Stream Project Adjourned after Failing to Agree on Agenda

The first sitting of the Parliamentary ad hoc Committee to establish the facts and circumstances regarding the missing strategic document "Roadmap for the implementation of the project for expansion of the gas transmission system of the Republic of Bulgaria" as well as all facts and circumstances regarding the implementation of the Turkish Stream project on the territory of the Republic of Bulgaria was adjourned on Tuesday due to disputes over the agenda. The first item on the agenda was to adopt the Committee's internal rules, the second was to hear Temenuzhka Petkova, who was Bulgaria's energy minister between 2014 and 2021, the third was miscellaneous.

Tuesday's sitting was chaired temporarily by the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) MP Ramadan Atalay, due to the absence of the Committee chair and Bulgarian Socialist Party MP, Dragomir Stoynev.

Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) MP Venko Sabrutev proposed to vote on the agenda that CC-DB had proposed, namely hearing the caretaker Minister of Energy (without specifying exactly who), the Inspectorate with the Ministry of Energy, the Bg Elves organization against disinformation and Ilian Vassilev as an analyst. While Sabrutev agreed to have Petkova speak at the hearing, he insisted that the other three items should be added to the agenda.

Atalay responded that the people proposed by CC-DB will be heard but only after providing the relevant materials and documents to the ad-hoc committee for the committee members to peruse.

GERB-UDF MP Tomislav Donchev called on the State Agency for National Security (SANS) and/or the Council of Ministers to provide the Roadmap. He said that two years ago, the head of SANS had confirmed that he had the map and provided it to the prime minister.

Stanislav Anastasov of the MRF asked Sabrutev and Martin Dimitrov how the organizations and experts they invite have acquired the documents, given that some of them contain classified information and trade secrets.

After a call from Atalay to vote on the Committee's internal rules, Sabrutev said his parliamentary group would not support them, because they had not had time to read them. Atalay, in turn, moved to adjourn the sitting.