While the outlook for the unfreezing of EU funding for Sofia halted over misspending allegations is only getting gloomier, the European Commission Tuesday once again rapped the Bulgarian authorities over lapses in their environmental performance.

Brussels has started new penalty procedures over the incorrect transposition of the EU directive on environmental impact assessment and the tardy allocation of integrated pollution prevention and control permits.

Unless Bulgaria rectifies the transposition of the directive on the environmental impact assessment of construction works over the next 60 days, the penalty procedure will continue and the member state could, eventually, end up in the European court in Luxembourg.

The Bulgarian environment ministry assured there was no litigation threat on any of the problematic areas and added that the EU red-flags have already been addressed with amendments to the Environmental Protection Act. However, that bill has been approved only tentatively by the MPs. Eco minister Cevdet Chakarov assured that the issue concerns purely technical wordings having to do with inaccuracies in the translation into Bulgarian and not with whole provisions in the text.

Only 52% of operators obliged to have integrated permits have been issued one so far despite the fact that the deadline expired on October 30, 2007.

The EU executive started the penalty procedure after it was alerted for pollution from steel mill Kremikovtzi and some thermal power plants.

The eco ministry said the integrated permits that have missed their deadline will be issued by September 30 thus avoiding a continuation of the penalty procedure.
Source: news.dnevnik.bg