Bulgarian government foresees ‘extremely intensive work’ in preparing for 2018 EU presidency
The efforts of all bodies and institutions involved in preparations for Bulgaria to hold the presidency of the EU in 2018 will be mobilized in coming months of extremely intensive work to carry out measures involved in the preparations, the government said on July 12.
At a regular meeting, Bulgaria’s Cabinet adopted a national programme for the country’s EU presidency and the main package of priorities for the presidency, Liliyana Pavlova, the minister in charge of Bulgaria’s EU presidency, said.
A government statement after the Cabinet meeting said that 17 of the 57 measures in the plan for the preparation for the presidency had been implemented by June 30.
Most of the public procurement contracts have been announced and a number of measures are being implemented as a result of already concluded contracts with selected contractors under the Public Procurement Act, the government statement said.
In the coming months, work on structuring the Bulgarian programme for the EU presidency on formats of the Council of the European Union will continue.
The final text of the programme will be proposed for adoption in December 2017 “in view of the need to take account of the results achieved during the Estonian Presidency,” the statement said.
Bulgarian National Radio reported Pavlova as saying on the morning of July 12 that there was “no delay” in the preparations for the presidency.
The presidency, in the first half of 2018, will be at a key time for Europe, she said. Pavlova said that key priority themes would be security, energy, migration and the Western Balkans.
/Politics
