site.btaEC Hopes for Positive Solution Regarding Bulgarian Recovery Plan

The European Commission Thursday expressed hope for a positive solution regarding the second payment to Bulgaria under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. “We are pretty much at the beginning of the year, so we do hope that we'll come to a positive solution when it comes to the Bulgarian recovery plan, as soon as possible,” said a Commission spokesperson as he took a question about that at a news conference. 

„We are still looking at the second payment request from Bulgaria that actually arrived in October 2023. We initially last year issued our preliminary assessment of this payment request, where we stated that some key milestones had not been actually implemented by Bulgaria. Later our assessment was endorsed by the Council Economic and Financial Committee. But what I can also say now is that at this stage we are still in a constructive dialogue with Bulgaria to address outstanding issues and to see how we Bulgaria can actually implement the outstanding milestones and targets. These discussions are still ongoing, I cannot really say now to what extent this payment might be suspended or not. We are discussing with the country and we are hoping for a positive solution of this discussion,“ he said.