Austria rejects Bulgaria's Schengen entry
Bulgaria and Romania cannot join Schengen until there is reform of the borderless area, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer told Bulgarian Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov in Vienna yesterday. The formal rejection was expected by the Austrian media beforehand.
"The Schengen system needs to be repaired," stressed Nehammer. Bulgaria and Romania should be supported with additional funds, but this will not be enough, he said. "Until the system is fixed, expansion is impossible," Nehamer said.
The meeting between the two heads of state, which lasted no more than an hour, comes two days before the Council of the European Union in which all state leaders will discuss migration reform in the bloc. Migration reform was one of the conditions for Austria to lift its veto on Schengen. "It's not about objections against Bulgaria and Romania, but about security policy at a time when the Schengen system is broken," added Nehammer.
Kozloduy gets 500 million levs from the energy holding
The official procedure for the construction of the new 7th Kozloduy NPP unit was launched today with the cabinet deciding to increase the enterprise's equity by 500 million levs.
The funds will be provided as a loan from the Bulgarian energy holding, so as not to burden the state budget. The initial option was to use the funds from selling the Belene nuclear facility equipment to Ukraine, but the sale is taking longer than expected.
The cabinet's decision comes after a memorandum was signed a week ago between the American company Westinghouse and several Bulgarian construction companies for future cooperation in the implementation of the project.
GERB, MRF do U-turn on fuel storage
The parliamentary energy commission today approved a draft law regulating the fuel storage regime, effectively repealing changes that came into force two weeks ago - on October 13. The law had stupulpated that fuel importing companies were obliged to store 100% of their stocks in warehouses in Bulgaria, and not 50% as was allowed until then.
Delyan Dobrev, the commission chairman from GERB, emphasized that 92% of the warehouses are owned by oil refinery Lukoil Neftohim, which limits competition to the remaining 8%. The new proposal calls for reverting to the 50% mark.
Dobrev said that that he had not paid attention to the amendments, and the chairman of the budget committee, Yordan Tsonev (MRF), who had proposed the bill, had relied on a text from the Ministry of Finance.
Austria rejects Bulgaria's Schengen entry
Bulgaria and Romania cannot join Schengen until there is reform of the borderless area, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer told Bulgarian Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov in Vienna yesterday. The formal rejection was expected by the Austrian media beforehand.
