site.btaOctober 11, 2010: German Chancellor Angela Merkel Pays Working Visit to Bulgaria

On October 11, 2010, German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived on a working visit to Sofia at the invitation of Prime Minister Boyko Borissov.

During the visit, she was presented with an Order of the Balkan Range, with ribbon, for her particularly significant contribution to the development of Bulgarian-German relations and for her exceptional merits in Bulgaria's accession to the EU. She was awarded also for her contribution to the solution of the case with the six Bulgarian medics in Libya and their return in Bulgaria. They came home in 2007, after eight years in a Lybian prison on charges of deliberate HIV infection of hundreds of Libyan children in Benghazi.

Merkel was also awarded an honorary doctorate by Angel Kanchev University of Ruse for the institution's excellent contacts with academic and business circles in the European Union, particularly in Germany.