Bucharest/Sofia, August 3 (BTA) - A hundred and forty projects ideas, worth 270 million euro, were approved during the first step of the third call for proposals under the Interreg VA Romania-Bulgaria Programme a meeting of the programme's Monitoring Committee in Bucharest on Wednesday.

Participants endorsed the final draft of the application guidelines during the second step of the call which is final for the current programming period. Projects proposals during the second step under the third calls can be submitted by October 16 2017.

Seventy-nine contracts, worth 102 million euro have been concluded under the programme. This is more than 50 per cent of the available budget, it transpired during the meeting. Deputy Regional Development Minister Denitsa Nikolova co-chaired the mixed meeting.

Nearly 110 million euro will be made available under the programme's third call for proposals for projects targeting connectivity (59 million euro), environment (35 million euro) and safety (16 million euro). The full projects selected in phase two will be able to start implementation in 2018.