Since the beginning of 2006, the Environment and Water Affairs Ministry (MOEW) had not issued a single negative environmental assessment on all the projects that had been filed for approval with it, the ministry said in a response to a question by environmentalists, as quoted by Dnevnik daily on October 31.
The question in the form of a letter was sent by Vesselin Paskalev, a lawyer and consultant for the ecological coalition To Sustain the Nature in Bulgaria (SNB), and was part of a campaign, with which the environmentalists wanted to encourage MOEW to do its duties. The ministry was the central authority and all of its local inspectorates had not even tried to prevent any of the construction projects that were destroying Bulgarias nature, Dnevnik said.
The newspaper quoted a recent statement by Deputy Environment and Water Affairs Minister Chavdar Georgiev, who said that in the first six months of 2007, 1640 projects had been submitted for approval. Over 2006, 2500 applications had been submitted. The environmentalists said that this was like a Supreme Cassation Court that had never passed a single sentence.
The failed protection of potential areas of the Natura 2000 network was one of the reasons for environmental organisations to file two complaints with the European Commission against Bulgarian authorities. The organisations were now preparing a third complaint against a recent Cabinet decision to not include the terrains that have approved construction blueprints, as well as those granted on concession, in Natura 2000.
