The only thing in which Bulgaria is a champion in spending - that is, in first place in the European Union in terms of size - is the spending it allocates for internal order and security. This was stated to Nova TV by Fiscal Council member Lyubomir Datsov.
The Deputy Chairman of the Board of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Security Emilian Nedyalkov added that the Ministry of Internal Affairs must undergo a reform, which the unions have been insisting on for years through the conduct of a structural and functional analysis of the department.
Datsov pointed out that the spending on the sector in our country exceeds the average for the European Union by over 30%. He pointed out that the Fiscal Council raises this issue alongside the issues of the lack of reforms in the security system. "The Ministry of Internal Affairs is an extremely closed system. "It has never been subjected to something called a public expenditure review in the last 30 years, which has been done for many of the systems," Datsov noted, adding that the automatic mechanisms introduced two years ago have further burdened public finances. According to him, the large accumulation in the Ministry of Internal Affairs does not come from people in the field, but from the remaining disproportionately large structures.
Nedyalkov agreed that the ministry must be reformed. "We have been talking about this for years and insist that a structural and functional analysis be carried out to provide answers to the questions regarding duplicated structures, redundant structures, where there should be more, where there should be fewer police officers", he commented, but specified that these steps are still expected.
Regarding the data that every fourth employee in the Ministry of Interior is of retirement age - or about 11,000 people out of a total of 46,000 employed - Emilian Nedyalkov stated that these figures do not reflect the real picture. "These data that are being exported actually provide general information on accumulation, which has been going on since 2015. And there are a large number of people who retired during this period and at the same time left", explained the unionist, estimating that the real number of working pensioners is around 5,000 or 5,500 people.
Regarding the right to early retirement and the compensation of 20 salaries upon leaving the system, Datsov pointed out that in Bulgaria the principle of which employees should benefit from these preferences has been violated. "Early retirement is inherent to people who work underwater, underground or in the air. And these are the professions that actually have a slightly different treatment", he explained and added that in our country the distortion of the pension fund is enormous and currently every Bulgarian citizen takes money out of his pocket to top it up.
In turn, Nedyalkov explained that employees who work in the administrative sectors do not benefit from these rights. "In the Ministry of Interior, there are such employees who are in clerical work, who are in finance, who deal with logistics, with clothes, with cars, with accounting - all these people do not have these privileges", he specified.