site.btaDelay under Recovery and Resilience Plan May Adversely Affect Bulgaria's Euro Membership

"A delay in the implementation of projects, under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, could adversely affect the country's membership in the eurozone. If European payments for some projects are lost, then they will have to be financed from the national budget, which will increase the budget deficit for the coming year," said Finance Minister Temenuzhka Petkova on Monday. She was speaking at a briefing at the Council of Ministers to announce which projects proposed will be removed from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan.

"There is a huge delay in the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Plan, but on the other hand, the time remaining for the completion of the activities under the plan is less than 18 months," Petkova said.

"For me as finance minister, the key issue is related to how to maintain the stability of public finances and how not to allow projects, investments that are set out in the Recovery Plan to be financed with national co-financing, because this would have an extremely adverse impact on the budget for 2026," the Minister said.

"This issue is extremely important because any expenditure that would remain at the expense of the state budget would in effect reflect on the deficit for 2026, which in turn is key in terms of the convergence reports that are currently being prepared by the European Commission and the European Central Bank regarding Bulgaria's membership in the eurozone," Petkova said.

"For this reason, for some time now the team of Deputy Prime Minister Tomislav Donchev and the team of the Finance Ministry have been in very intensive communication with the European Commission," Petkova added.