Sat, Nov 07 2009

The two countries that joined the EU in 2007 continue being in the spotlight of EU's attention.
The Bulgarian Government handed out nearly half a billion leva from its economic stimulus package to municipalities, with Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev saying the key selection criterion was rapid absorption of the money.
Of the 10 projects halted by Phare, three have been completed and are currently in operation and the rest are under construction. 15 new projects await tender procedures by the end of April 2009
On a billboard, put up in front of the Council of Ministers in Sofia, contains a complaint from a company that said it had not received payments due for an EU funded project.
These are some of the top stories in Bulgarian newspapers on January 21 2009. The Sofia Echo has not verified these stories and cannot vouch for their accuracy. Politics: Standart News reports that Bulgaria has a chance to receive some funds frozen by the European Commission under the Phare programme. Michael Leigh, Director-General for Enlargement, had sent a letter to Bulgaria's Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works, and to the office of Meglena Plugchieva, Deputy Prime Minister in charge of EU funds management.
Businessman Martin Dipchev, accused of writing up his expenses on a project financed under EU's pre-accession aid Sapard programme by more than 600 000 leva, will pay a paltry fine of 2500 leva, Plovdiv District Court ruled on January 12, as reported by website mediapool.bg. The administrative punishment was imposed for the use of false paperwork in submitting the application to the Sapard payments agency, the court ruled.
European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said on December 19 that Bulgaria had no other option but to comply and follow the rules and regulations of the EU. Barroso's statement came after he met with Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev in Brussels, which Stanishev visited briefly. "The reform process must speed up rather than slow down. We need a consensus in Bulgaria that treats the fight against high-level corruption and organised crime as issues of national importance," Barroso told a joint news conference.
Infrastructure projects already contracted under the European Union Phare pre-accession aid programme could be kept going with Budget funds, Bulgaria's Regional Development Minister Assen Gagaouzov said on November 29. Bulgaria irretrievably lost 220 million euro in Phare funds, which had not been contracted yet, after the European Commission decided not to lift the suspended accreditation of two Government agencies in charge of handling the funds - the Phare executive agency of the Regional Development and Public Works Ministry and the Central finance and contracts unit of the Finance Ministry.
When in July 2008, announcing its decision to suspend hundreds of millions of euro in aid to Bulgaria because of concerns about corruption and fraud, the European Commission said: "Bulgaria itself has to make the commitment to cleanse its administration and ensure that the generous support it receives from the EU actually reaches its citizens and is not siphoned off by corrupt officials, operating together with organised crime".
Bulgaria is set to miss out on at least 91 million euro in European Union funding set aside for the modernisation of its road infrastructure, mass-circulation daily Trud reported on November 20. The money was going to be allocated under EU's Phare pre-accession aid programme to the Regional Development Ministry, but the European Commission is yet to be persuaded that the ministry's unit responsible for distributing Phare funding can do so in a transparent way, Trud's correspondent in Brussels reported.
Seven thousand people lost their jobs in October, labour minister says
Once the promotional tickets are purchased during the discount window, they will be valid for the period January 4–March 30 2010
Flannagan’s will be replaced by a French brasserie as part of a 10 million euro Radisson renovation
Globul has accumulated a profit of 139.1 million euro for the period January – September 2009, or a 0.3 per cent drop as opposed on last year’s results
After 100 days in office, Finance Minister Simeon Dyankov pinpoints 10 key issues for Cabinet in ‘the next 100 days’