The government caved in to the lobbying of an offshore oligarch. The building up of National Park Pirin continues!

The construction of one of the two new lifts was halted by the MEW in August this year because of concessionaire’s illegal tree-felling during the construction. Now the MEW has issued a new permit for the lift construction, without having gathered the fines and before the prosecutor’s investigation had been completed. This is happening at the time when the European Commission has already started against Bulgaria an infringement procedure for the violation of the NATURA 2000 directives because of two similar decisions made by the government of the tripartite coalition in 2007.

In the course of two weeks, the Ministry of Environment and Water has demonstrated utter disrespect for the UNESCO decision about National Park Pirin. In the beginning of August, at its 34th meeting the World Heritage Committee of the Convention made a decision that any development of ski installations in National Park Pirin would lead to the inclusion of the park in the List of World Heritage in Danger. Thus Bulgaria would rank together with countries such as Afghanistan, Congo, Iran, Iraq, and Uganda where wars and internal conflict are threatening the World Natural Heritage sites.

For more than 10 years, the MEW has not been able to ascertain the actual size of the territory used by the concessionaire Yulen JSC, but keeps on issuing new permits for construction in the National Park. According to experts of the “For the Nature” Coalition, the concessionaire of the ski-installations has twice exceeded the area allowed to use under the concession contract.

The concessionaire of the ski-installations in National Park Pirin – Yulen JSC, is the majority ownership of two firms registered in offshore zones. The last two governments had permitted massive construction in the National Park in violation of the concession contract and the management plan of the National Park.

The Coaltion “For the Nature” was expecting from the current government to change this policy and exercise real control over the activity of the concessionaire. Instead, obviously strong financial interests have prevailed again over the international convention, European directives, the laws and image of Bulgaria.

The Coalition calls on the government to divulge the private persons, owners of the firm concessionaire so that the public would know whose interest stands above the national interest. The suppression of this information will reconfirm the conviction of the Coalition that shares of the offshore companies that own Yulen JSC might have been the object of deals during the last year and might have passed into the possession of representatives of the governing majority.

Decision 34 СОМ 8В/2010 и Decision 34 СОМ 7В.19/2010 of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee http://whc.unesco.org/document/104960

For more information:
Petko Tsvetkov, Bulgarian Foundation “Biodiversity”, tel.: 0896798905, email: petko.tzvetkov@biodiversity.bg

Translated by: Margarita Petrova