Brussels, 16/09/2015 (Agence Europe) - The President of Bulgaria, Rosen Plevneliev, assured the European Commission that Sofia is firmly behind the planned Energy Union, during the visit to the Bulgarian capital of the Vice-President of the Commission in charge of the dossier, Maros Sefcovic, on Tuesday 15 September.
“Energy cooperation based on market principles, sustainable development and transparency will guarantee the security of energy supplies. To establish a functioning energy market, we need adequate connections of the energy infrastructures: both electricity and gas transmission”, said Plevneliev, in a statement reported by the national press agency BTA.
Plevneliev pledged that Bulgaria would always support the Commission in its efforts to build a platform and an adequate framework for this cooperation, stressing his country's willingness to “be part of the solutions in the energy sector at the EU level”. The Bulgarian President also underlined Bulgaria's determination to liberalise its energy market by the end of this year.
The Bulgarian President went on to thank Commissioner Sefcovic for his devotion to the cause of the Energy Union, reiterating his support for greater integration as a counterpoint to regional isolation, within the context of the challenges facing the countries of south-eastern Europe.
At a conference on energy security and energy infrastructure, which he attended the same day alongside the Bulgarian Prime Minister, Boyko Borissov, and the Bulgarian Energy Minister, Temenuzhka Petkova, Sefcovic said that “Bulgaria's position clearly shows that an energy supply solution should be found for the whole region of south-east Europe”, the agency BTA reports. Sefcovic noted that three of the seven major energy projects in the region (mostly gas projects) are Bulgarian, but also have an impact on its neighbours.
Along with eight other EU countries (Austria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia), Bulgaria is part of the gas interconnection group for central and south-eastern Europe (CESEC). This group is looking into an action plan to reinforce cooperation, integrate gas markets and develop into connections and infrastructure in the region (LNG terminals, connections to the Southern gas corridor, development of offshore reserves in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea), particularly between Bulgaria and its neighbours. The aim of this group is to ensure that each of these nine countries has access to at least three different sources of gas supply (see EUROPE 11249).
In July of this year, CESEC also gained its commitment to a pan-European initiative with the other countries of eastern and south-eastern Europe, which are members of the Energy Community (Albania, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Serbia and Ukraine, which will be joined at a later date by Bosnia & Herzegovina and Moldova), to speed up the construction of the missing connections between the gas infrastructures and to create an integrated gas market (see EUROPE 11356). (Emmanuel Hagry)