Border taxes BG-RO...

... are not going away, if this article is right. It doesn't get very clear which exactly of all taxes being paid at the Romanian border are going to stay (most probably all of them!?) but the advise of the former Bulgarian minister of European Integration and currently the representative of Bulgaria in the European Commission - Meglena Kuneva - is of the opinion that the municipality of Rousse should sue the municipality of Giurgiu at the court in Luxembourg. It seems strange to me that these taxes are actually levied by the municipality of Giurgiu, as municipality representatives have resisted pressure to lower or dismantle those taxes in the past with the justification that they are imposed by various national Romanian ministries (this applies for sure to the bridge tax ("taxa pod")). Central and local authorities in Romania are tossing the ball to one another, each one denying responsibility for the imposition of the taxes, but the other interesting question in the case is "who benefits from them", because there seems to be a small group of people who bear the benefits of the border taxes at the expense of the majority of the citizens of the towns and villages in the border areas .

Cross-border transport?

There will be a regular public cross-border bus line between Ruse and Giurgiu after 2 January 2007, according to the mayor of Ruse Bozhidar Yotov, as quoted here (in Bulgarian). The price of a ticket will equal the price of a town bus line ticket.

Even though I cross my fingers for that, me thinks - too good to be true. Currently a car that passes the border has to pay approximately 25 EUR in taxes and while some of them may fall out after 2007, the bridge tax, for example, can be still justified. I doubt that certain government agencies and groups with vested interests will allow the incomes from all the taxes to vanish just like that.