The National Trust Ecofund participated in the Discussion Forum "Mayors Speak", which was held on July 10 and 11, 2023 in Gabrovo.

The representative of the fund, Kamelia Georgieva, joined the discussion regarding the gaps in the education system and the inability to provide staff for quality project implementation, which was reported as a huge problem both locally and nationally. The NTEF project for creating a model of municipal energy management services and the professional training of staff in them was presented. NTEF is also a partner in the BISMART project - the Bulgarian Forum for Financing Energy Efficiency Projects under the Horizon 2020 program.

The central topic of the forum was the tools for implementing innovations for sustainable energy, as well as the integrated plan in the field of energy and climate.

Angelina Boneva, Deputy Minister of Regional Development and Public Works, shared her view that local authorities are the real carriers of transformation, and municipalities are always at the forefront when we face increasingly frequent economic and energy crises. According to her, the dialogue on multi-level governance has not yet been held, and it is necessary to define clear responsibilities and clear instruments with which local authorities can implement more and better quality projects.

Tanya Hristova, Mayor of Gabrovo Municipality and host of the meeting, highlighted the key role of municipalities, which are expected to take a direct part in achieving national goals, but do not receive technical support for the implementation of complex projects, and the still missing financial decentralization does not allow for the building of local capacity.

An important part of the problem is the instability and lack of sustainable financing of energy efficiency policies, confirmed the Executive Director of AUER Ivaylo Aleksiev.

According to Dragomir Tsanev, Executive Director of Enefect, the campaign nature of the programs and the targeting of a huge public resource to a limited number of beneficiaries leads to market distortion and the introduction of incorrect consulting and construction practices. The solution is to create a permanent mechanism that would combine subsidies with soft loans, mobilize service providers and meet the demand from owners at any time.

At the end of the forum, he expressed his confidence that this edition of the forum would attract new like-minded people from all sectors to the 96 municipalities that signed the declaration of last year's forum. He announced that a permanent national forum for cooperation in the development of the National Plan in the field of energy and climate is being opened and promised that the talks in this direction will not stop there.