On 5 and 6 November 2019 an inaugural working meeting of the participants in the Project “Enhancing the analytical capacity of the Energy and Water Regulatory Commission” was held at the Energy and Water Regulatory Commission. The Project is implemented with the financial support of the Operational Programme “Good Governance” and co-financed by the European Union through the European Social Fund. EWRC is the project beneficiary and the project is being fulfilled by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.  

In the working meeting the participants that took part were the EWRC project leader Mrs. Svetla Todorova, Mrs. Evgenia Haritonova, member of EWRC, EWRC experts, the project international consultants dr. George Vlondakis and Miltos Aslanoglou from EXERGIA, the consultants Kremena Stoyanova, Dilyana Ivanova, Iveta Ivanova, as well as Vesselina Haralampieva and Svetlin Pislenski from the EBRD office in Bulgaria.  

During the meeting the consultants presented the project and its objectives, management structure, planned activities and anticipated results. The issues discussed included project activities schedule, the commitments of the key experts and the supporting expert team, the provision of support by EWRC in terms of access to data and documents and tasks related to the coordination with other stakeholders / Commission on Protection of Competition (CPC), Financial Supervision Commission (FSC), etc./.

On the second day of the inaugural meeting the focus of discussion was on establishing a unit at EWRC dealing with REMIT violations and investigations, drafting rules on documents circulation and keeping the trade secret in the investigation files. Other discussion matters involved the need to draft rulebooks for on-site inspections carried out by investigation expert, collecting and preserving evidence in the course of investigations under REMIT, developing methodologies for calculation of penalties and for cooperation with the specialized state investigation authorities.

On 22 and 29 November technical working meetings were held with the consultants in order to clarify the planned activities and results under tasks 1 and 2 and under tasks 3, 4 and 5 of the project.