Bulgaria was the fastest in the EU to sign an Operational Arrangements Agreement under the Recovery and Resilience Plan
On 1 August, Bulgaria signed an agreement on Operational Arrangements with the European Commission. This is the last necessary agreement in relation to the Recovery and Resilience Plan before our country submits an official request to receive funds under the mechanism. This was announced by the Ministry of Finance.
Bulgaria is the member state with the fastest negotiated and signed Operational Agreements in the entire EU. Although the Bulgarian plan was the 24th adopted, Bulgaria is the 15th country with Operational Arrangements with the EC. The process usually takes between 5 and 7 months, with as many as 10. The Bulgarian government was able to finalize the process in less than 3 months after the approval of the Bulgarian plan by the Council of the EU.
The operational agreement further specifies the responsible institutions, the method of verification for the achievement of the agreed goals and practical issues regarding the method of cooperation in monitoring the implementation of the Plan. It will be published on the European Commission’s website after the completion of their internal procedures.
This confirms that there is no delay in the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Plan. In less than 3 months, a Financial Agreement was signed and ratified, all legislative measures related to the first payment were implemented, an information system was built and an internal regulatory framework was developed and adopted for the implementation of reforms and investments, including a Management and Control System.
In the coming days, the first request for receiving funds under the mechanism will be sent, which, after a two-month evaluation by the EC and a procedure in the Council, is expected to arrive in the fall.
For more information, the status of the implementation of the measures under the PVA can be tracked at http://2020.eufunds.bg/bg/0/0/MilestonePayments. The implementation goals agreed between the EC and Bulgaria are available at https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-8091-2022-ADD-1/bg/pdf.