October 15 (BTA) - Bulgaria will do its best to defend
its coal-fired power plants, President Rumen Radev said Friday,
answering a question whether the country will be able to make
its case for the plants' closure by 2040 before the EC. He added
 that he has made this his personal cause.

Radev said: "We need a Green Deal, we need a green transition,
but it must unfold very carefully so that countries like
Bulgaria do not lose their competitiveness and do not pay too
high a price." He recalled that at the May 2021 European Council
 meeting, in which he participated, Bulgaria, Poland, Greece and
 Hungary achieved the removal of an entire item of the
declaration which was to be adopted and to greatly accelerate
this transition.

"We will defend our coal-fired power plants because at the
moment they ensure our autonomy and independence, they are the
balancing facilities in our energy system, they provide the mix
that Bulgaria needs and has nothing to replace with," Radev
said.

Asked about desecrated Bulgarian military cemeteries in the
Republic of North Macedonia, President Radev said: "We will not
allow any more such incidents to happen. But this is a
systematic process of de-Bulgarization, a process of destruction
 of our cultural and historical heritage in the Republic of
North Macedonia."

He also said: "The latest Bulgarian positions that I have
spelled out are in favour of bringing this long-standing
dispute, this stagnation in a historical dispute, which is
likely to continue for many years, to the crux of the problem -
de-Bulgarization, the discrimination of the Bulgarians living in
 the Republic of North Macedonia, and we will strive towards
this."

Radev, Defence Minister Georgi Panayotov, the Chief of Defence,
Admiral Emil Eftimov, and the Air Force Commander, Major General
 Dimitar Petrov, laid flowers at the Pilot Monument near the
National Assembly building on the occasion of the Aviation and
Bulgarian Air Force Day. RY/YV
//