site.btaPresident Expects Government to Ensure Completion of Second, Third Payment under NRRP

President Rumen Radev expressed his expectation that the Government will follow the example of Galab Donev's caretaker cabinet (August 2022 - June 2023) and Bulgaria will receive a second and third payment under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP). The Head of State attended the Golden Martenitsa Awards on Thursday.

"Recently, I have been seeing some people trying to justify the current state of the Plan with caretaker governments, especially those appointed by me, but there is no refuting the facts, and the facts are that the first and only payment under the Recovery and Resilience Plan was done during the government appointed by me with caretaker prime minister Mr. Galab Donev. And I expect the current Government to follow suit and have a second and third payment," the head of State said.

The second NRRP payment worth EUR 653 million will be denied, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Innovation and Growth Tomislav Donchev said on Wednesday morning. Later in the same day, Donchev said that "we will try to save as much of the second NRRP payment as possible".

"The HEMS project for air medical assistance, the National Centre for Surveillance, Coordination and Management from Space to make Bulgaria a truly modern country with transparency and innovative management methods - both projects were developed in the presidential institution and my caretaker government immediately put them in the Plan and we made sure that Brussels approved them and allocated funding. I am not going to comment on what happens from there on with the subsequent negligence that led to us not having these two very important projects deployed and working," Radev said.