Bulgaria has requested to withdraw its application to the European Commission for the payment of the second tranche under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, the Commission reported to BNR.
The request was made yesterday after coordination with the Commission. Yesterday, Deputy Prime Minister Tomislav Donchev stated that the government will withdraw the request for a second payment of EUR 653 million submitted in October 2023, will revise it and submit it again. In this way, the government will try to save the money under the second tranche, which months ago seemed lost.
The Commission confirmed that on April 16 Bulgaria submitted an application for a review of the national plan. Sofia also wants to add a chapter to the plan on the REPowerEU mechanism. The REPowerEU proposal contains 3 new reforms and 4 investments, of which three are new and one is increased.
The proposed reforms aim to strengthen the governance framework for energy poverty and prepare for the liberalisation of the retail market, to make the connection procedures for new renewable energy sources and storage capacity more transparent, to improve the functioning of the balancing energy market, to facilitate the deployment of demand response measures.
The proposal includes investments in areas such as the development of an information system for identifying energy poor and vulnerable households, promoting the use of renewable energy and electric vehicles in social services, as well as providing additional space for electricity storage by increasing the current investment under the RESTORE mechanism.
Bulgaria also proposes to repeal or amend several measures in its plan, while not giving up on keeping the money allocated to it under the Recovery Mechanism. and resilience.
The Commission will continue to work with the Bulgarian authorities on the revision of the national plan and will assess whether, after the changes, it continues to meet the criteria of the mechanism. Bulgaria's recovery and resilience plan includes a number of investments and reforms, the Commission recalls. It is financed with a grant of EUR 5.69 billion.