Foreigners will be allowed to work as experts in Bulgaria’s state administration or councilors under new legislative changes, the prime minister said.
Sergey Stanishev was speaking at a meeting with the ambassadors of EU member states, who were invited to hear more about the government’s idea to further cooperation between Bulgaria, EU member states and the European Commission with regard to judicial reforms, administrative capacity and EU funds absorption.
The meeting was attended by the ministers Ivaylo Kalfin, Meglena Plugchieva and Gergana Passy.
Stanishev denied reports that the opening of jobs for foreign experts aims to annul the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism that was set up to assist Bulgaria in dealing with its shortcomings regarding judicial reform and the fight against corruption. The mechanism aims to enable Bulgaria to correctly apply Community law and fully enjoy its right as EU member.
The prime minister stressed that the existing mechanism should remain in place and added that the new cooperation with the European Commission and the EU member states will cover topics outside the range of the monitoring.
According to Stahishev the recruitment of foreign experts in the state administration will serve as an incentive for the Bulgarians to reach the highest of European standards.
“Bulgaria has done a lot of work over the last years and the scale of the reforms implemented can be described as a revolution,” Stanishev said.
Commenting the latest report of the European Commission, the prime minister said it was positive but underlined the biggest mistake would be to slacken the pace of reforms.