92001E0992

WRITTEN QUESTION E-0992/01

by Geoffrey Van Orden (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(30 March 2001)

Subject: Funding for Bulgaria

What progress has been made towards complying with the request made by the European Parliament over five months ago in its resolution of 4 October 2000 on Bulgaria's application for membership of the EU (A5-0241/2000): to provide Parliament with a detailed and comprehensive breakdown of all recent funding to Bulgaria at the earliest possible opportunity, along with an assessment of the contribution of its assistance programmes to the achievement of substantive economic and administrative progress in Bulgaria?

Answer given by Mr Verheugen on behalf of the Commission

(8 June 2001)

The Commission is sending direct to the Honourable Member and to Parliament's Secretariat a detailed description of the programming framework and the projects supported in Bulgaria under the

Phare programme since 1999 and under the Instrument for structural policies for pre-accession (ISPA) and the Special Accession Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development (SAPARD) programmes since their inception in 2000.

There is a well-established system of monitoring and evaluation in place to assess the impact of ongoing and completed projects supported by Community funds. Reports prepared by independent evaluators are used to address and remedy weaknesses in project implementation and draw general lessons that can then be applied when programming new assistance. Judging by these reports, the effectiveness with which Bulgaria uses Community assistance is uneven. This often reflects weaknesses in the project implementation capacity of Bulgarian institutions. The Commission has responded to these weaknesses by more carefully designing, and attaching stricter conditions to, newly programmed assistance.

When assessing the effectiveness of Community assistance to Bulgaria's pre-accession preparations, it is difficult to distinguish between the contribution of Community-supported initiatives and those sponsored by the complementary programmes provided by the international financial institutions and bilateral agencies.

However, the Commission is encouraged by the broad direction of reform in Bulgaria. The authorities have succeeded in stabilising the macroeconomic situation, adopting much of the Community acquis and starting to address sensitive social issues. Bulgaria has so far made good progress in the accession negotiations. On the other hand, Bulgaria does not yet have a functioning market economy, the quality of public administration (particularly the judiciary) and implementation of the acquis is uneven, and corruption remains a problem. These are the key issues on which Community assistance will focus in the immediate future.