GERB-SDS has objected to merging the Executive Agency for Fisheries and Aquaculture (IARA) with the Executive Forest Agency. MP Galya Vasileva read out the party's position in a declaration from the parliamentary rostrum.
IARA is based in Burgas. Vasileva said the idea of keeping the agency independent should be seriously considered, because once it is folded into another body it stops being a separate state authority.
The agriculture ministry has given better structure, lower costs, fewer layers of management and stronger oversight as its reasons for the merger. It also says that after the two areas are combined, specialist knowledge and skills will still be required and expertise will not shrink. GERB-SDS sees a contradiction in exactly this and asks why IARA then has to lose its independence.
Vasileva said an administration should change when it does not work well enough, and become closer to people, easier to reach and less bureaucratic. In her view, a reform makes sense only when it is first clear what the problem is, how it will be solved and what will work better afterwards.
The MP said what makes IARA special does not begin or end with its specialist administration. You cannot write a change into a set of rules and expect that, the very next day, a different administration with a different remit exists, she said.
The easiest thing is to call the decision "optimisation", merge two bodies and report fewer staff, Vasileva said. It is far harder to build an institution, train people, gather expertise and earn trust. That has already been done.
GERB-SDS said IARA's employees are not a line in a spending table but part of what the state can do. The party said it would defend the agency's future today as firmly as it did more than 10 years ago, when it fought to keep the agency in Burgas.
Vasileva said she would not accept that IARA's staff in Burgas, and a whole sector, should pay the price for a lack of clear direction in management.