Bulgaria Wants to Take Back the Port from Russian Lukoil

Today, the WCC-DB coalition submitted a bill to the country's parliament that would return the Rosenets port, controlled by the Russian company Lukoil, to Bulgarian control.

This was reported by Novinite.

The draft law and arguments in favour of this decision were presented by the co-chairs of the two coalition parties, Kiril Petkov and Atanas Atanasov, who want to end the port concession, which was extended for 24 years by the interim government appointed by pro-Russian President Rumen Radev.

"This morning we are submitting a proposal to return control of the port of Rosenets to the Bulgarian state. Our proposal will terminate the port concession, which was extended by the interim government for 24 years without any reason," said Kiril Petkov from the sidelines of parliament. - "We believe that control over this port is key for the Bulgarian state and, in principle, all key infrastructures should be under Bulgarian control. Especially those along the border.

You know, in the past there were always doubts about the control over this port. Our strategic goal is to join Schengen, and this is a big, clear step in that direction.

The Ministry of Transport told us that we can operate this port and there will be no problems with its operation. Instead of concession fees, there will be a profit from the operation of the port, but it will be fully under Bulgarian control.

This step is also in line with the EU's resolution on sanctions against Russia over the war.

In this way, we clearly state that Schengen is our national goal, that from now on Bulgaria's key facilities will not be transferred without any grounds and expanded for unclear purposes, and that this is an approach that this government and this parliament will support."

Atanas Atanasov was even more direct:

"We have been saying for years that the Bulgarian state should regain control of the port of Rosenets, and now that Russia has declared Bulgaria an enemy country in the war it is waging in Ukraine, we are taking steps to limit Russia's ability to use Bulgarian infrastructure that will supply funds to Russia. This is the main purpose of what we are doing because we have data and it is well known that, among other things, because the Bulgarian state does not control this port, smuggling goes through there, meaning that most or some of the oil that is imported is not declared to the Bulgarian state, and the revenues generated by the concessionaires go to support Russia in the war."

"We have been saying for years that the Bulgarian state should regain control of the port of Rosenets, and now that Russia has declared Bulgaria its enemy in the war it is waging in Ukraine, we are taking steps to limit the opportunities for Russia to use Bulgarian infrastructure that will supply funds to Moscow," Atanasov said.

The leaders of the two parties stipulated a one-week deadline for the project.

After that, Lukoil will continue to use it for a fee, not as a concessionaire, Petkov confirmed.