If everything is in order with the 4-year fiscal plan, Temenuzhka Petkova may return from Brussels with good news for the eurozone.
This was told to the Bulgarian National Radio by Lyubomir Datsov, a member of the Fiscal Council, explaining that Bulgaria will present the 2025 Budget to the Eurogroup together with a 4-year fiscal-structural plan before it is announced in our country.
"The parameters that Bulgaria must achieve are clear. This year the budget deficit may be 3%, but in the next 4 years, if this trend of the economy continues, it will have to drop to a minimum of 1.5% deficit. This is according to European legislation and if we present a plan that does not meet this criterion, we will not enter the eurozone".
"Fiscal councils have existed since the 1950s in various countries. After the financial crisis of 2008-2010, they were created mandatorily in every EU country. Fiscal councils have a limited function and mainly take care of two things - that the macroeconomic forecast is correct or relatively correct and for the so-called fiscal rules, which are a set of instruments that, based on European and local legislation, must be observed in order for the budget to fall within certain frameworks related to the EU requirements for a 3% deficit, for the sustainability of public finances, for the policies that are implemented through it. The Fiscal Council has no bearing on how the money is spent, but only monitors the macroeconomic balances or imbalances that appear," said Datsov in connection with the insistence of the "Vazrazhdane" party to close the Fiscal Council (FC).
The mandate of the members of the FC is 6 years, and they are currently working 3 years beyond it, he explained and recalled that in 2022 there was an announced election for members of a new FC and there was a hearing in the budget committee, but no report was submitted to the plenary hall for a vote.
"We work very well with the European Commission on the review of public finances. In our country, we have been particularly useful to the opposition, but everyone necessarily reads us. In some respects, perhaps we are better partners with Brussels. "Currently, our opinion can be ignored without any problem in our country, but this will not be the case when we enter the eurozone, then the FS reports will have a different degree of obligation to the government," Datsov explained, adding that new European legislation has been adopted, which gives additional obligations to the FS, which will require the rewriting of a completely new law in our country.