Claims lodged against the rail infrastructure company have passed EUR 700 million, Bulgaria's national news agency BTA reported. The figure marks the scale of creditor demands now facing the operator responsible for the country's rail network, and it positions the company among the largest corporate insolvency-adjacent exposures in the Bulgarian transport sector.

BTA did not attribute the total to a single class of creditor, and the company itself has not disputed the order of magnitude in public statements carried by the agency. The EUR 700 million threshold is the hardest number in the story: it sizes the gap between what counterparties say they are owed and what the infrastructure manager can currently satisfy.

What does the EUR 700 million figure cover?

The reported claims aggregate demands from creditors of the rail infrastructure company. Under Bulgarian restructuring practice, admitted claims define the perimeter of any recovery plan: they determine creditor voting shares, the haircut each class faces, and the cash or debt instruments a proposed settlement must fund.

At stake is more than a balance-sheet dispute. The infrastructure company maintains the track, signalling and structures on which passenger and freight operators run. Recovery terms that stretch payments to maintenance contractors and energy suppliers feed directly into the pace of renewals, the availability of lines, and ultimately the capacity the network can offer trains.

Why should shippers and operators care?

For rail operators holding receivables or paying track-access charges to the company, the claims total signals how the counterparty risk is priced. Suppliers to the infrastructure manager face the more immediate question of recovery rates. A claims pile above EUR 700 million against a state-owned network operator also frames the political decision ahead: whether Sofia recapitalises the company, restructures its debts, or lets the insolvency framework distribute losses.

Each route produces a different operational outcome. A capital injection preserves the current maintenance programme. A negotiated haircut spreads the cost across contractors and lenders. A court-driven process adds timeline risk to every open contract.

What happens next?

BTA's report fixes the exposure at more than EUR 700 million. The next verifiable milestones will be the admission or rejection of claims by the competent court or administrator, the publication of any recovery plan, and any government decision on state support. Until those documents land, the EUR 700 million figure stands as the working measure of what the rail infrastructure company's creditors assert they are owed — and of the financial weight now sitting on the network that Bulgarian trains depend on.

Further reporting will track whether the admitted total moves above or below the BTA figure as verification proceeds.