Municipal Investment Strategies And National Policies In The Process Of Accession To The European Union: Impressions From Bulgaria

Abstract

Salient features of the modernisation of municipal solid waste management (MSWM) include, in addition to the modernisation of equipment, regionalization of the service and the construction of modem sanitary landfills. By contrast, traditional services are local, with even small settlements having their own service organisation and dumps. Most of Bulgaria, excluding the major cities where the service is often privately managed, still conforms to the traditional model.

In its efforts for accession to the European Union, Bulgaria is launching an ambitious programme for the construction of landfills that conform to EU standards. However, these investment programmes by and large disregard the principles of regionalisation and commercialisation of MSWM, so that in fact far more landfills may be planned than the country would need. Furthermore, there is negligible financial support for the modernisation of the fleet of vehicles and equipment. It is argued that these policies are likely to result in unbalanced and inefficient use of scarce resources. Also, indirectly and unwittingly, such distorted policies are in fact a response to European Union policies which insist on rigorous and costly standards of landfilling without really addressing the pre-requisites of modernising and regionalising waste collection and transportation services. A number of recommendations are given in this paper for correcting the unbalanced policies referred to above.