European Commission

The EC’s pre-accession aid to Bulgaria is mainly provided by three instruments: the PHARE programme, ISPA and SAPARD.

The EU raised the amount of financial assistance to Bulgaria by an average of 30% in the period 2004-2006. Bulgaria received about € 400 million per year reaching 2% of its GDP. Under its mid-2004 agreement with the EU, Bulgaria receives 240 million euro on top of the previously announced funding of 4.4 billion euro from the EU's 2007-2009 budget.

The Minister of Finance of Bulgaria is the National Aid Coordinator and ISPA Coordinator. He exerts his power by:

• organising and carrying out the activities related to coordination, programming, management, monitoring and assessment of the financial aid provided to Bulgaria under the EU pre-accession financial instruments
• organising and monitoring the efficient and lawful management of the resources from the EU Structural and Cohesion Funds in compliance with Bulgaria's policies for accession to the EU
• coordinating the joint monitoring mechanism for implementation of the programmes funded by the pre-accession instrument.

Further reading:

• Absorption and Management of EU funds – major documents, management schemes, financing memoranda, financial implementation of programmes, structural funds, tenders (Ministry of Finances of Republic of Bulgaria)

PHARE Programme

• National Programmes
• Cross-Border Co-operation (CBC)
• Multi-Country & Horizontal Programmes
  

ISPA Programme

SAPARD Programme

For the period 2007-2013 the European Commission has proposed a thorough reform in the pre-accession assistance rendered to Candidate Countries with the aim to simplify and better adjust its priorities and implementation rules.

The Commission has proposed two new instruments:

• the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA), which will replace the 2000-06 pre-accession financial instruments PHARE, ISPA, SAPARD, the Turkish pre-accession instrument, and the financial instrument for the Western Balkans CARDS, and
• the European Neighborhood Partnership Instrument [297 KB] (ENPI), which will replace the 2000-06 MEDA, TACIS and (part of) CARDS programmes