EU’s Poorest State Faces Battle to Access Pandemic Aid
- Deputy PM says interim cabinet struggling to settle big issues
- Bulgaria set for third election of 2021 in coming months
People receive Covid-19 vaccines at the Military Medical Academy in Sofia, Bulgaria, on Aug. 6.
Photographer: Nikolay Doychinov/AFP/Getty Images
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The makeshift government in Bulgaria, the European Union’s poorest state where vaccination against Covid-19 is the bloc’s lowest, is struggling to access billions of euros of pandemic aid from Brussels as it braces for a new wave of the virus.
Along with the Netherlands, the Balkan country of 7 million people is one of only two EU members not to have submitted a final plan for how to spend their share of the bloc’s more than 700 billion-euro ($828 billion) recovery package.