site.btaMedia Review: June 20

OVERVIEW

All media quote Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov who reported that state-run watchdogs will be on the lookout for unscrupulous sellers and retailers who are willing to spike their prices on the verge of Bulgaria adopting the common European currency.

ECONOMY

Trud quotes an article in Politico that suggests that Bulgaria may have slashed key state-controlled prices to massage down inflation numbers and help it qualify for euro membership. The article points out that in April, the country announced an 82.8% cut in daily fees for hospital treatment. While healthcare is the big factor, rail fares were also cut by over 9%, postage costs were reduced by nearly as much.

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An article in Mediapool.bg points out that Bulgaria remains the last EU Member State to be featured in the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list of countries where money laundering is a relatively easy process. Dnevnik.bg specified that the country was added to that list in the autumn of 2023. Mediapool writes:

"Just a week ago Croatia was removed from the 'grey list', and thus Bulgaria remained the only EU Member State still facing serious problems with the financial transparency of money flows.

"The authorities in Sofia have not implemented eight of the 40 recommendations of the FATF, the world's leading anti-money laundering organization. Bulgaria continues to have a problem with confiscation procedures and taking preliminary measures when money laundering or terrorist financing is suspected and detected.

"The country can implement some recommendations relatively quickly, such as changing its criminal laws to cover terrorist financing and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. At the same time, however, Bulgaria needs to pay special attention to more difficult issues such as international cooperation on asset freezing and confiscation, the sensitive issue of oversight of NGOs, correspondent banking, and the introduction of new technologies to track money laundering."

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Trud quotes an GERB-UDF Deputy Floor Leader Denitsa Satcheva who said in an interview for bTV that even though prices should not change, there are unscrupulous traders trying to profiteer by introducing unjustified price spikes months before the euro is adopted. According to Satcheva, profiteering should be fought vigorously but without excessive state interference, since competition is the best regulator. The MP said that President Rumen Radev may be fit to head a polling organization but not to lead a country. She added: "If the country were ruled the way Radev thinks, it would be ruled by sociologists who would ask people what they want every day. Let us ask them how much they want to pay in taxes. Most people probably do not [want to pay any]. Politicians explain these very things."

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In an interview for 24 Chasa, European Commission Executive Vice-President for Social Rights and Skills, Quality Jobs and Preparedness Roxana Minzatu said that people should pay attention to their qualifications, especially in the field of digital technology, since we live in a world where most jobs will be transformed by the use of artificial intelligence. She said that this process requires not only money and good training programmes, but also the attitude, the desire, the time, the willingness to forget what we know and to relearn what we need to know. She added that this process should incorporate the whole society, as only one institution is not enough to shift the paradigm.

On the topic of Bulgaria's joining the euro area, Minzatu said that this step will attract investors and private capital, it will create jobs. She pointed out, however, that some 2 million Bulgarians are at risk of poverty and social exclusion due to their low incomes. As possible measures to tackle this problem, Minzatu spoke about EU funds, cohesion policy, and the European Social Fund Plus that already supports around 600,000 vulnerable people.

When asked about the Food and Basic Material Support Programme, which supports more than 500,000 Bulgarians, Minzatu said that providing food alone will not solve people's vulnerability. It will not lift them out of poverty. She said that in other parts of Europe, offering a hot meal opens the door of trust to the beneficiary, who may then be more open to services such as counselling, seeing a medical expert, a psychologist, applying for a job.

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An op-ed written by the academic director of the Ludwig Erhard Forum for Economy and Society in Berlin, Stefan Kolev, and published by Capital is entitled Bulgaria Is Moving Forward but as if the Handbrake Is On". It reads: "We live in an era of identities that are being reinvented. Certainly currency is something that emotionally but also rationally affects a person's identity. Few things in economics are so close to everyday life. Moreover, the lev is something that has developed well as an institution in Bulgaria over the last 30 years. It is understandable to have an attachment to it. The question is which political entrepreneurs use it to accumulate political capital.

"I remember how the euro was introduced in Germany, because I was already there. There were similar emotions – a sense of loss and uncertainty. The question is whether this nostalgia is for the currency or for the time when it existed, because the currency is also a symbol of an era. In those years the Deutsche Mark was a symbol of wealth and security, it was the DNA of the German social market economy.

"I think that for Bulgaria neither the pros nor the cons of the introduction of the euro are particularly big. If it were not for the currency board, the effects would have been much harder to predict. Joining the euro area has one symbolic plus as the final step of integration into the EU and the West.

"There has been a big change in the concept of 'the West', but I hope that Ukrainians, dying for this concept every day, will remind us of its meaning. We Bulgarians, as a closed society, did not know what was happening in the West until 1989. There were all kinds of myths and legends. And to some extent it was logical to have some disappointment. Yes, life is good in the West, but it is not paradise.

"And what has happened since 2015 is that many of the crises have been used to plant anti-Western narratives. And when 10-11 years of those narratives are filled with a new tonality, it is no surprise that it has an effect on young and old alike."

POLITICS

An article published by Capital criticizes Minister of Foreign Affairs Georg Georgiev for a series of blunders that tend to go viral online. The first one took place years ago, when Georgiev, then leader of the GERB youth organization, was photographed kissing the hand of GERB leader Boyko Borissov.

The article continues: "Last Sunday the minister made another blunder. He was caught voting in the snap elections for mayor of Sofia's Slatina borough not with his ID card, as required by the Electoral Code, but with a photo of the document on his phone. The violation of the law, including by the members of the section election commission who allowed him to vote this way, would probably not have been found out, if the website serving the government, PIK [pik.bg], had not broadcast online how Georgiev together with GERB's mayoral candidate, Lili Ivanova, entered the polling station. The Minister first showed the lady from the committee his mobile phone with the photo of his ID card. After he cast the ballot, he dictated the ID number, because the woman had failed to write it down. 'There are representatives of all parliamentary parties in the section election commission, but none reacted to the violation,' Dnevnik wrote."

MEDIA

Dnevnik.bg writes that reforms related to freedom of speech, including those required under European Union law, related to SLAPP cases, for example, have been delayed over the past year without clear justification. There is also a significant risk that the environment for free expression will deteriorate, if the right of legal entities (e.g. companies and organizations) to bring claims for non-pecuniary damage caused by journalistic publications is recognized. These are some of the conclusions of a report entitled “The State of Access to Information in Bulgaria 2024” drafted by the Access to Public Information Programme.

EDUCATION

In an interview for the Bulgarian National Radio, Prof. Nikolay Kolev who reads law at New Bulgarian University said that he is concerned by the lack of analyses when it comes to how children's psyches work in the context of the Ministry of Education and Science planning to introduce Virtues and Religion as a subject in public schools. Kolev expressed doubt that this move aims to benefit the schoolchildren and suggested that its goal is more likely to back someone's political agenda.