“[Finance Minister Plamen] Oresharski is an indisputable international authority. He managed to maintain financial stability,” Economy and Energy Minister Petar Dimitrov said in the morning talk show of private broadcaster bTV, when asked whether the ministers whose names were involved in the controversy stirred by the report of European anti-fraud office Olaf should be sacked. The report said that Bulgarian authorities were protecting businessmen who embezzle European Union funds.
“As to [Regional Development and Public Works Minister Assen] Gagaouzov, it is very important to measure the work he has done, not with statements from one person or another, but with the kilometres of roads constructed,” Dimitrov said.
“The first cabinet to actually investigate itself, even if it is not ministers who are investigated but executive authorities, is the current Cabinet,” he said, adding that the data that the European Commission had on EU funds mismanagement came from Bulgarian investigative bodies, “not CIA or other foreign investigative bodies”.
Former defence minister Boiko Noev commented on the blasts in a military base near Sofia on July 3 and who was to take the responsibility for them in the morning talk show of Nova Television. “It became clear that there was a political decision for the munitions [in the base] to be destroyed,” Noev said. The closed-in defence sector should start opening, which would lead to shared responsibility, he said. Civil society control was needed, according to Noev.
After he wanted it himself and the constitutional court allowed it, the President became commander-in-chief of the army in peace time, which meant that he had the same responsibilities as the defence minister and the army chief of staff. It was high time that the major problems in the army were resolved, Noev said.
State Agency for Tourism head Anelia Kroushkova told Bulgarian National Television that “we are proud of our tourism, our Bulgarian tourism. […] I am sure that this summer season, as it goes, would end up very successfully.”
