Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
when making decisions about investments that will have environmental
impacts. The accession process also reinforces democracy, institutional
accountability, and the rule of law. Bulgaria's progress on these measures
was slow, leading to the country being left out of the fi rst round of
postcommunist accession. Even when Bulgaria joined three years later,
persistent weaknesses in these areas led the EU to add unprecedented
conditions to the accession agreement. The record both during accession
and since has been decidedly mixed. Elections occur regularly and ballots
are not fraudulent. However, there are shortcomings in media access
during elections and in governance. In fact, the EU has acted on the
conditions attached to Bulgaria's entrance. Faced with intractable cor-
ruption on an EU-supported highway project and after several warnings
and pressures to improve fi nancial and institutional accountability, the
EU froze infrastructure fund fl ows (under the Instrument for Structural
Policies for Pre-Accession or ISPA program) to Bulgaria in January 2008.
When after six more months, the government still failed to address crime
and corruption satisfactorily, the European Commission cut off fi nancial
assistance and withdrew the accreditation of two Bulgarian government
agencies to manage EU funds. This measure was unprecedented, although
it was foreseen by the special conditions attached to the accession agree-
ments with Bulgaria and Romania. Despite these enormous losses, the
government was unable or unwilling to right its house enough to unfreeze
the funds through 2008. The EU did unblock some of the funds in May
2009 after Bulgaria had adopted a Confl ict of Interest Act and revised
both the Public Tenders Act and the Road Act (Sofi a News Agency
2009b). Bulgaria still ranked last in absorption of ISPA funds in the fall
of 2009 (Sofi a News Agency 2009a) and was threatened with the loss
of more infrastructure aid well into 2010 for not being able to initiate
and complete projects within the allowable time frame (
Sofi a Echo
2010). This ongoing struggle demonstrates both the possibility and limi-
tations of EU infl uence over domestic institutions, accountability, and
the rule of law (see also Noutcheva and Bechev 2008).
Three Cases of Foreign Investment in Gold Mining
Bulgaria has been a signifi cant site of gold mining at least since the days
of ancient Thrace. Through the centuries, gold mining has been con-
ducted underground in traditional fashion. Under Soviet-infl uenced com-
munist rule, exploration and exploitation of gold resources continued,
leaving in their wake many studies and a good deal of contamination.
