site.btaForeign Minister: Presidency Turned Out to Be Biggest Taxpayer-Funded Political Base

“We turned out to be right that the Presidency has been the largest political base, funded by taxpayers’ money,” Foreign Minister Georg Georgiev told journalists here on Tuesday, commenting on the head of State’s address to the nation on Monday.

According to Georgiev, this has perhaps been the longest election campaign, lasting nine years. “When a person is elected President of the Republic and is constitutionally tasked with uniting the nation, they cannot, at the very least, use the instruments of state power to do exactly the opposite,” the Foreign Minister argued.

Georgiev said he has watched with concern over time a number of controversial moments in President Rumen Radev’s foreign policy stances. “I very much hope that Bulgaria’s foreign policy and the geostrategic choices we have made over the past 30 years will not be shifted in a direction that Bulgarian citizens would not like,” the Minister said. In his view, if some of the attitudes displayed by the head of State in the past had been implemented in practice, events such as Tuesday’s symbolic opening of the Rudozem–Xanthi border crossing might not have taken place.

As examples of such attitudes, Georgiev pointed to questioning strategic choices made by Bulgaria, as well as certain developments in international law that, he said, were commented on in a strange manner. “I sincerely hope that the consistency of Bulgaria’s foreign policy will be preserved, regardless of the sentiments within the State,” the Foreign Minister said.