This, in practice, is the long-awaited positive end of the strenuous efforts exerted by the target institutions working under PHARE Program in our country, namely PHARE Implementing Agencies to the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works, Ministry of Labor and Social Policy and Ministry of Economy and Energy.
With the accreditation the Bulgarian target institutions obtain both acknowledgment of the successful fulfillment of the minimum requirements of EC on quality systems for implementation of PHARE projects, and full responsibility of the contracting process for PHARE and for this purpose ex-ante control will be exercised at every stage of this process. So far that function has been performed by the Delegation of the European Commission in our country (now EC Representation) which had to approve all contracts before their signing.
The process of Bulgaria's preparation for transition to extended decentralization was managed and coordinated by the Deputy Minister of Finance nominated as National Authorizing Officer and the National Fund Directorate at MoF in its capacity of treasury authority and guarantor of the application of the principle of sound financial management of the funds provided to our country by the EC.
This process started at the end of 2002 and concluded formally with a detailed audit of the systems on all levels of implementation of PHARE projects. The audit was carried out by three different teams of EC for a month at the end of the summer of 2006 and the final audit report was submitted at end-January 2007.
The audit recommendations resulted in the implementation of specific measures which were to strengthen the assurance of the auditors of Bulgaria's preparedness to assume the additional responsibility granted together with the accreditation as well as its ability to quickly readapt the established systems so that their operation is subordinate to the public procurement rules of our national legislation which is the governing one since we became full-fledged members on 1 January this year. Statutory instruments supplementing the Public Procurement Law have been developed and adopted. Detailed procedure manuals for the operation of PHARE Implementing Agencies in accordance with PPL have also been provided.
These will be the rules that need to be known and observed by every person who applies for implementation of a PHARE project after 01.07.2007 under the 2005 and 2006 Financing Agreements, or in figures - for absorption of EUR 342 million from the EU. The experience in the PHARE Program will be extremely valuable also in the absorption of the funds under the Operational Programs financed from the EU Structural Funds and Cohesion Fund.
Source: Ministry of Finance
