site.btaGreen Movement Leader: "Forests Being Cleared for Solar Power Plants Not Due to Bad Green Deal, But to Bad Legislators"

Green Movement co-leader Toma Belev posted on Facebook from a campaign trip to the southern region of Ihtiman and showed how woodlands there are being cleared to build solar power plants. "Behind me are 40 ha of what used to be forests, 60-70-year-old oaks and conifers, which have been felled. At another location, 60 ha more have been cleared to make room for photovoltaics. At a third location, 21 ha of woods that was afforested in 2014 and 2015 under a project of Ihtiman Munitility, has been privatized and cleared to build a solar power plant," he said. 

Belev said people would blame the Green Deal for that, but it is legislators who are to blame. "The EU does not want us to chop down our forests and build photovoltaics on pastures and meadows, or arable land.  They have set us a goal which is good: to be independent from foreign energy sources and what is free: the sun, wind and water. The problem is how the Green Deal is being implemented in Bulgaria. The reason for that is that we have elected to Parliament a bunch of people who don't understand the directives, people who are ignorant. [...] There is no need to build on forests, meadows and pastures if there is political will. But there is no political will because every such action is for the benefit of a particular economic entity that is looking to make a quick profit without waiting for an environmental assessment," Belev wrote in his post from Ihtiman.