The main part of the assistance was committed to annual instalments of aid for large projects under construction and a new stage of a project for which the Commission had already provided assistance.

1. Funds shall be released where a project or a solution in its operational phase is included in the rolling work programme or after successful completion of a project phase as defined in the rolling work programme and any amendments thereto.

8. Calls for an extension of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Directive to cover all offshore projects phases (exploratory and operational) and calls for specific requirements for EIAs in the case of deep water, complex wells, challenging drilling conditions, and transfer of oil/gas by underwater pipelines located on/under the seabed; considers, furthermore, that the Commission should ensure that EIAs for offshore projects approved by national authorities also cover the procedures operators must follow during decommissioning; calls on the Commission to reassess the legal provisions on ...[+++]EIAs and lay down therein that environmental impact assessment procedures must be entrusted to experts who are independent of the client;

26. Calls for an extension of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Directive to cover all offshore projects phases (exploratory and operational) and calls for specific requirements for EIAs in the case of deep water, complex wells and challenging drilling conditions, and transfer of oil/gas by underwater pipelines located on/under the seabed; considers, furthermore, that the Commission should ensure that EIAs for offshore projects approved by national authorities also cover the procedures operators must follow during decommissioning; calls on the Commission to reassess the legal provisions ...[+++] on EIAs and lay down therein that environmental impact assessment procedures must be entrusted to experts who are independent from the client;

However, in line with its practice in such cases, the adoption of a decision regarding the first phase of the project and the rapid start of the construction of the first-phase infrastructure should be sufficient for the Commission to suspend the pending infringement procedure, which will provide Bulgaria with the necessary time to prepare an environmentally compliant and long term cost-efficient second phase of the Sofia Municipal Waste Management Project.

Since the first phase of the project is entirely funded by the European Union and Eurocontrol, there is a need to spell out the detail of the private sector’s contribution for the second phase.