Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 25th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview I. Local Government Author(s) Elena Kalfova Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski Sofia Bulgaria Title Inter-municipality Cooperation in Bulgaria – Between the Necessity and Impact of EU Policies. File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Elena Kalfova Abstract The demand for effectiveness and efficiency in the management and supply of public services at the local level is one of the current issues facing the Bulgarian municipalities. In Bulgaria, self-government is traditionally realized at the local level. The system of local self-government in Bulgaria went through a number of reforms in the period after the collapse of the socialist regime till the end of the 20th century. As a result Bulgaria has a democratic system of local self-government. Municipalities have authorities in almost all spheres of public governance. The sphere of competence of local self-government includes also areas whose management requires significant administrative capacity, financial and human resource. The institutional system of local self-government in Bulgaria remained stable in the past 15 years notwithstanding the number of political and economic crises. However the municipalities are faced with a couple of major problems, in particular in the supply to public services: shortage of financial resources; shortage of human resources; the need to manage spheres which, in terms of their scope, address problems of supralocal nature. There are two reasons for the above situation. First, the country suffers from a severe demographic crisis – ageing population, on one part, and depopulation of many regions, on the other part. In fact, only the capital city has positive population growth while the second biggest municipalities Plovdiv and Varna manage only to preserve the number of their population. All of the other 263 municipalities register continuous decline in the number of their inhabitants. Besides, more than 25% of the Bulgarian municipalities have population of less than 6000 people . This situation highly limits their ability to generate own managerial and financial resource and to maintain their administrative capacity. Second, the tradition of strong central government is preserved in many spheres, in particular in the supply of public services. The central government retains control over municipality’s sources of finance (a share of municipalities’ own revenues – 25% on average of the total revenues to the municipal budget). The supply of public services is financed on the principle of delegated activities. Against this background, inter-municipality cooperation for the supply of public services seems the unavoidable alternative. Despite that, the Bulgarian municipalities actually do not cooperate on a voluntary basis for the supply of public service until they are under an obligation by law to do that. A reform calling for inter-municipality cooperation is implemented in the waste management sector in the past three years. Regional waste management association are currently operating in Bulgaria with varying success. A similar reform is currently going on in the water sector. The purpose of this paper is to analyze reasons for inter-municipality cooperation for supply of public services or rather for the limited implementation of this practice in Bulgaria; to assess the transfer of EU policies to Bulgaria and to what extent this is a factor and whether it is the only factor for inter-municipality cooperation in Bulgaria; to highlight the extent to which inter-municipality cooperation is taken on board in spheres other than those prescribed by law. The results of the reform in the waste management sector are also analyzed with a view to taking into account its influence on the current water sector management reform.
