Bulgaria might lose additional EU funds destined for the agricultural sector because of discrepancies between the control systems of the Ministry of Agriculture and Foods and of the respective Executive Agency.

This was announced Monday by the Bulgarian newspaper Trud Daily, which claims to have acquired a copy of a report of the EC Directorate-general for Agriculture and Rural Development.

The report was allegedly sent to the Deputy Prime Minister Plugchieva, the Agriculture Minister Valeri Tzvetanov, and the Director of the State Agricultural Fund Atanas Kanchev at the beginning of September.

In it, the EC threatens to block the funds destined for direct subsidies for land cultivation, and the money for the development of rural areas unless the Bulgarian government took measures to rectify the discrepancies and sent explanation to Brussels.

The irregularities were discovered by the EC mission of auditing experts, which worked in Sofia between June 9 and June 13, 2008. These include, among others, different definitions of the agricultural lands eligible for subsidies leading to a number of violations.

The data and regulations of the System for Identification of Agricultural Plots of the Ministry of Agriculture and Foods are found to contradict on many instances those of the Information System for Administrative Control of the Executive Agency.

Some EUR 140 M from Bulgaria's agriculture funding from the EU under the pre-accession program SAPARD have already been frozen over violations together with hundreds of millions of euros under the other two pre-accession programs.

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