EU cuts off subsidy payments to Bulgaria

Several cases of corruption have prompted the EU to stop payment of subsidies for Bulgaria's agricultural sector. Funding for several other programmes (Phare, Ispa) has also been frozen. Ognan Mintchev comments: "It's very difficult for the Bulgarian state to comply with the EU's institutional rules and procedures. The economic elite and its oligarchic involvement in national institutions has taken on criminal proportions in its self-enrichment using the nation's capital. ... This trend was evident throughout Central and Eastern Europe during the process of privatisation of state property. But unlike in Bulgaria, once the property had changed hands in the other countries, the new economic elites there agreed to use the money in an orderly and legal fashion in future. The Bulgarian oligarchy has refused to do this."

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