25.04.2025

‘The transition to a low-carbon economy is a top priority for Bulgaria and the country has been working on it for a long time. At the same time, this transition must be fair, take into account the national specificities of the Member States and in no case should it be at the expense of losing competitiveness’. This is what the Minister of Finance Temenuzhka Petkova said during a meeting with the European Commissioner for Climate, Net Zero Emissions and Clean Growth Wopke Hoekstra. They discussed the European directive on the restructuring of the Union’s legal framework for the taxation of energy products and electricity. The Industrial Plan for the Green Deal and its first two pillars, as well as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism were discussed during the meeting.

‘Decarbonisation is important both for the environment and for the economy and boosting Europe’s competitiveness’, Commissioner Hoekstra stressed. He paid special attention to the new investment opportunities of the Cohesion Fund for the development of renewable energy capacities, the electricity grid and the increase of the transmission capacity, as well as for the construction of interconnections between EU Member States. The Commissioner also shared his vision that, in the long term, energy mix taxation should depend on the sustainability and carbon footprint of sources.

The focus of the conversation was on Bulgaria’s path towards the euro area. Minister Petkova underlined that in February our country had met all the numerical criteria for joining the euro area, in view of which a request for extraordinary convergence reports had been sent to the European Commission and to the ECB. Bulgaria expects a positive outcome in early June. Commissioner Hoekstra, who is also a former finance minister of the Netherlands, agreed that according to the GDP, unemployment and external debt figures, our country was performing very well.