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SOFIA – The Bulgarian parliament rejected a proposal to reintroduce an additional tax on the transit of Russian gas to central Europe, which could have angered Serbia and Hungary.
In October 2023, Bulgaria introduced a fee of €10 per MWh of Russian gas passing through its territory, prompting Hungary to threaten to block Bulgaria’s Schengen membership.
The Bulgarian parliament responded to Viktor Orbán’s threat and, in December 2023, cancelled the tax, which was expected to raise €1.2 billion a year.
In early 2025, after Bulgaria and Romania joined Schengen, proposals to introduce the tax on Russian gas transit resurfaced in Sofia.
The pro-European liberal party We Continue the Change proposed to reintroduce the same fee, while the Balkan Stream gas pipeline, which runs through Bulgaria, remained the only transit route for Russian pipeline gas to the EU.
On 1 January, Ukraine cut off gas transit to the EU after its contract with Russia expired.
Assen Vassilev, the former finance minister of We Continue the Change, argued for the need to introduce the fee along with measures to reduce the budget deficit in 2025.
Vassilev said the fee would be paid by foreign countries, citing the example of Turkey, which has raised its fees for foreign ships crossing the Bosphorus Strait several times since Russia’s war in Ukraine began.
Temenuzhka Petkova, who was energy minister in two governments of ex-Prime Minister Boyko Borissov’s GERB party and is now the favourite to become finance minister in a future GERB-dominated government, said it will never happen.
She said in order to force Gazprom to pay this fee, the conditions for the transit of Russian gas would have to be renegotiated. On Tuesday, the Bulgarian parliament accepted GERB’s arguments and rejected the proposal to return the fee.
The leader of Bulgaria’s largest party, GERB, Boyko Borisov, and Bulgarian President Rumen Radev have repeatedly demonstrated their close relationship with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
In October 2023, the GERB party voted in favour of the fee together with We Continue the Change, and Borisov later admitted that Bulgaria wanted to force Austria to lift its Schengen veto by threatening to raise gas prices.
(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)
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