15.06.2022

“We had a very fruitful discussion and the first topic we discussed was the possibility for Germany to support our efforts on the Kapitan Andreevo border check point with German customs staff”. This is what Deputy Prime Minister for EU Funds and Minister of Finance Assen Vassilev said after his meeting with the Federal Minister of Finance of the Federal Republic of Germany Christian Lindner who is on a visit to Bulgaria.

“The second topic of our talks was Bulgaria’s accession to the euro area on 1 January 2024 and the support of our German counterparts along this path. We also discussed the agreement between Bulgaria and Germany on supporting the development of both administrations with a particular focus on public procurement procedures. We also discussed the possibility for the Anti-Money Laundering Agency and the European Prosecutor’s Office to have greater powers and to be located in a member state with a very strong policy in this area like Germany”, Minister Vassilev said.

“We esteem very highly the support of our German counterparts both on the topics of bilateral interest and in terms of cooperation within the Council of Europe and the European institutions where we work quite heavily on several topics, one of them being the possibility for common purchasing of energy sources and gas and the other one being a common EU response to the potential food and grain crisis that is expected globally”, added the Deputy Prime Minister.

Mr. Christian Lindner emphasised the constructive exchange between the two sides. “We get the chance to meet in Brussels quite often and to exchange experience on a bilateral level. We always have common strategic objectives and prospects related to the topical political events which we try to address together, and I think that this is beneficial both for Bulgaria and for Germany”, Minister Lindner. “We value Bulgaria’s efforts as a partner very highly, we support Bulgaria and we commend it for the stable government finance, which is an inspiration for us. We are extremely impressed with what Bulgaria has achieved in terms of financial stability and we can only learn from the Bulgarian experience and from the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Plan”, the German Minister of Finance pointed out.

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