The European Commission is opening six infringement proceedings against Bulgaria for failure to comply with EU rules.

The first area of failure concerns the lack of sufficient information about the forecasts and measures on monitoring greenhouse gas emissions and the Kyoto protocol implementation.

The second infringement procedure against Bulgaria is over inadequate waste management infrastructure in its capital, Sofia. Bulgaria's accession treaty foresees no transitional period for meeting these requirements and thus it should have complied with them from 1 January 2007.

"The shortcomings, which include the lack of a system and installations for the recovery and disposal of household waste, the lack or inadequacy of temporary storage sites - some of which are located close to residential areas - and the lack of adequate pre-treatment of the waste, are posing a serious risk to human health and the environment," the commission said in a statement.

The third infringement proceeding against Bulgaria is for lack of availability of the European emergency number 112.

EU telecom rules require member states to ensure that it is possible to call the emergency services free of charge, and to ensure that telecommunications operators provide emergency authorities with the caller location information for calls to '112' from both fixed and mobile phones.

The fourth and fifth infringement proceedings are opened for delay in the introduction of biometrical data documents and for failure to comply with EU legislation requirement for notaries to hold Bulgarian citizenship.

The last problematic area concerns the processing of waste, which is the result of shipping.

Surprisingly, Bulgaria's list regarding protected areas to be included in the Nature 2000 network was not on the European Commission list with Bulgaria's unresolved problems.

Meanwhile, the European Commission said it has decided to pursue infringement procedures against 22 member states for their failure to acknowledge Bulgarian and Romanian professional qualifications since these countries joined the EU at the start of this year.

The commission said it will send 22 member states - all except Bulgaria, Finland, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Slovenia - a letter of 'reasoned opinion', the second stage in EU legal proceedings.

The European Commission will address written warnings to Bulgaria over the six infringement procedures opened, requesting it to submit its observations by a specified date, usually two months.

If there is no satisfactory reply within two months, the commission may refer the matter to the European Court of Justice, Europe's highest court.

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