We took action and no funds will be lost under the Operational Program "Environment" due to the RDF recovery project by Sofia Municipality. This was announced today by the Minister of Environment and Water Rositsa Karamfilova at a joint briefing with the Mayor of Sofia Municipality Yordanka Fandakova. The briefing was held in relation to the project “Design and construction of an installation for combined energy production in Sofia with the utilization of RDF - third phase of an integrated system of facilities for the treatment of household waste of Sofia Municipality”.

“It is now certain that the project will not be implemented with funds from the Operational Program “Environment 2014-2020 (OPE)”, said Minister Karamfilova and added that the team of the OPE Managing Authority has been supporting the efforts of the beneficiary and its partner “Toplofikatsia Sofia” throughout the course of implementation.

Of the nearly 308 million BGN (VAT excluded) total budget for the implementation of the project under Operational Program "Environment", more than 177.6 million  BGN of grant funding was secured. Of these, an advance of 40%, or a bit over 70 million BGN, was provided to Sofia Municipality as early as December 2018. In the decision by the European Commission approving the project from 01.04.2020, the condition was set to conclude the first construction contract within 3 years after the date of approval, i.e. until 01.04.2023

“We could have had this conversation with you on April 1st and I would have said then that the deadline has passed and the opportunity for Sofia Municipality to do anything about it has been missed. But we have no time to lose, the OPE team is about to start negotiations with the EC to have the key indicator related to the implementation of the project dropped. With the successful renegotiation, we will avoid the imposition of a financial correction in the amount of millions”, said Rositsa Karamfilova categorically. About a third of the funds under the “Waste” axis of the program were earmarked for this project. The minister added that a process has already been streamlined for unused funds to be directed to indexation of contracts due to the inflation, with priority given to projects in the water supply and waste sectors.

In connection with the new Program “Environment 2021-2027”, Minister Karamfilova announced that due to the “lessons learned”, there will now be a requirement for the applicant to have already at the application stage announced the public procurement for the selection of a contractor for the main activities. The aim thereby it to minimize the risks of significant implementation delays, and in some cases, as in the case of the capital city’s RDF recovery project, to reduce the risk of loss of funds.