European Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms Elisa Ferreira said that Bulgaria is one of the countries in which carbon intensity is extremely high – more than three times the European average.
Commissioner Ferreira said that Bulgaria benefits from 13 projects this year in the field of transition to a clean economy and pointed out that the country, not unlike other EU members, has asked the European Commission for support in preparing its Just Transition Plan.
She said that the Commission has been informed by Bulgarian Government that this year they would not be interested in starting the implementation of the Just Transition Plan. This is the second year in a row that Bulgaria has failed to start implementing the Plan.
In 2022, the caretaker Government failed to submit officially the territorial Just Transition Plans for the regions that will be most affected by the planned phasing out of coal (Stara Zagora, Pernik and Kyustendil), resulting in a loss of 97 million euros in Just Transition Fund money.
The Just Transition Fund had a total of 1.3 billion euros to ensure a socially and economically sustainable transition in Bulgaria.
Commissioner Ferreira said that most countries think that it is better to manage this transition, particularly in those areas in which the transition is more demanding, by using the available funding in order to retrain people, to reskill people and to attract to the area new activities that can be more future-oriented, rather than wait for the natural dropping out of certain activities that obviously have no future.
