Meglena Plugchieva, Deputy prime minister
Ms Plugchieva was recalled in April from a high-profile post as ambassador to Germany to undertake the daunting task of improving transparency and co-ordinating EU programmes after accusations of corruption by the European Commission. She says a team from OLAF – the Commission’s anti-fraud squad – will spend two weeks in Sofia every month “to make detailed audits and ensure that procedures are being carried out correctly”, so that more than €200m in frozen funds can be unblocked by the end of the year. Ms Plugchieva, a Socialist career politician, is familiar with the way the Commission works, but with a general election due in a year’s time, the toughest part of her job will be to rally cabinet colleagues from other parties behind the Socialists’ administrative reforms. The stakes are high: Bulgaria stands to receive more than €6bn ($9bn) from the EU’s structural and cohesion funds over the next six years.
