Councillors in Ruse have asked the government to scrap the car toll on the Bulgarian side of the Danube Bridge. They passed the appeal unanimously at today's council meeting. A group of councillors proposed the text in a report.
Romania has already dropped the toll for crossing from Giurgiu to Ruse. The report says Romania's transport and infrastructure ministry announced the decision last month, and it has applied since 1 October. Romania acted alone, and the change covers only that direction. The Romanian side has formally invited the Bulgarian government to do the same.
The toll for a car on the Bulgarian side is €2, and drivers still have to pay it. The state budget gets about €24m a year from the Danube Bridge, and cars account for about €1.7m of that.
The councillors say this is a small sum for the state budget, but collecting it means every vehicle has to stop, and queues build up near the bridge. The appeal says that "the lack of a matching move by the Bulgarian state puts our fellow citizens at a disadvantage and undermines the principles of free European mobility".
"We insist on immediate steps to bring in reciprocity, which will ease traffic, remove the artificial queues at the border and boost the economic development of the whole cross-border region," the document says.