Bulgarian socialists demand urgent negotiations with Gazprom
In a post on Facebook, the leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, Cornelia Ninova, called for urgent negotiations with Russian energy company Gazprom to avoid business bankruptcies and ensure the country's people do not suffer in the coming winter.
According to Ninova, while politicians in Bulgaria and experts argue over who is to blame, whether there are LNG ships, whether the interconnector with Greece will work, the country's fertilizer factories have started shutting down production and laying off workers.
The Minister of Economy and Industry of Bulgaria will now conduct a survey of how many companies operate on gas and will instruct them to reduce consumption by 15%. These data are available – 28.000 enterprises use gas in which 250.000 people work, Ninova also believes.
She urged these enterprises in Bulgaria not to force themselves to reduce gas consumption, as some of them will never be able to start the machines again. According to the leader of the Bulgarian socialists, the solution at this stage for the economy and households is only one - urgent negotiations with Gazprom, as a number of European leaders have done.
The President of Bulgaria Rumen Radev should hold a meeting with the owner and management of the construction company "Avax", which is building the interconnector between Greece and Bulgaria, and with the management of the project company that commissioned the construction - ICGB. The purpose of the meeting is to clarify the real situation and the necessary activities for the fastest completion of the project.
A week before the presidential administration in Bulgaria, citizens who are against the return of Gazprom as a gas supplier are protesting.