site.btaWaste Crisis Solution Is for All Activities to Be Carried out Under Guidance of Relevant Municipality, Vazrazhdane Leader Says

The solution to the waste crisis in Sofia is for all activities to be carried out under the umbrella and guidance of the relevant municipality, Vazrazhdane party leader Kostadin Kostadinov told journalists in the parliamentary lobby on Wednesday.

“Where municipalities handle waste collection themselves, costs are significantly lower and the city is significantly cleaner,” he said. Kostadinov gave the municipality of Straldzha, Yambol region, Southeastern Bulgaria, as an example, where “waste collection costs have fallen threefold after the municipality set up a company to deal with waste instead of a private one. This is the solution,” Kostadinov said. The state is not a bad manager, but there are people who want to eliminate its functions, giving them to private companies, which subsequently siphon tens of billions,” he added.

Kostadinov pointed out that the waste crisis is recurring. According to him, such situations arise where there is “strong mafia presence”. “Everyone is to blame for what is happening, the state administration and the municipal administration,” Kostadinov said. Vassil Terziev has held the mayoral post for two years now, and "the problem should have been solved radically a long time ago," Kostadinov added. He called on Terziev to resolve the problem as quickly as possible. “We call on the Prime Minister to find a way to end the interference of the mafia in the affairs of the State and capital,” Kostadinov said.

Regarding the situation in the Elenite resort, on the southern Black Sea coast, destroyed by a deadly flood on Friday, the leader of Vazrazhdane pointed out that the municipality and state authorities were to blame. Torrential rain on October 3 hit Southeastern Bulgaria particularly hard, leaving a reported four people dead and causing extensive damage.

In response to a comment by Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) leader Rumen Hristov on Bulgarian National Television, who suggested that the president should be restricted from engaging in political activity for two years after the end of his term, Kostadinov said that no one can stop a politician from political activity because that would be lustration.

Regarding the article in The Wall Street Journal, which claims that [GERB leader] Boyko Borissov spoke to Donald Trump Jr., Kostadinov said that such a meeting was unacceptable and that an MP has no business “negotiating” with Donald Trump's son. The article reads that "former Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, still Bulgaria’s most powerful man,” saw an opportunity in April when Trump Jr. was on his Eastern European tour, to “advertise the pipeline [the Bulgarian section of TurkStream] and other Bulgarian assets.” Borissov hoped, the article adds, to “secure a meeting with the US President he met in 2019” and was “seeking relief from US Magnitsky Act sanctions for some of his close allies.”