site.btaMedia Review: May 29

POLITICS

The first visit of Bulgaria's new prime minister Rumen Radev to Brussels has drawn much attention in Bulgarian media. The former president and current head of the country's executive branch of power held separate talks with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa.

Trud.bg quotes Radev as saying to Rutte that NATO needs to make substantial investments and expand its military capabilities, have a clear vision and a well-working strategy, and pursue a realistic approach to current challenges. Rutte acknowledged Bulgaria's role as an important ally in the Black Sea region. During the session with von der Leyen, the European Commission President said Radev's victory in the April parliamentary elections will bring much-needed stability in Bulgaria and the region. The website notes that Radev did not need an interpreter during the visit as he spoke in English with his hosts and to the media.

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Ivan Kostov, prime minister of Bulgaria from 1997 to 2001, told the country's public-service TV that he and the entire democratic community want to see Andrey Gurov as President after the elections this autumn. Speaking on Friday's morning talk show on BNT 1 (the main channel of Bulgarian National Television), Kostov said that Gurov, who stepped down as deputy governor of the Bulgarian National Bank to serve as caretaker prime minister between February 19 and May 8, 2026, did a great job over the past three months.

Discussing the threat of Russian influence in Bulgaria, for which incumbent Prime Minister Rumen Radev is alleged to be a vehicle, Kostov said this is a talking point of the GERB party and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms. According to Kostov, the Russian threat is not real, and no one is in a position to change Bulgaria's political course. "We are too deeply integrated in the EU and NATO, so I do not think that this is a factor anymore. In this sense, it should not be an issue and a topic in the [presidential] elections, because none of the candidates would stand to gain from it."

Drawing a parallel between the full parliamentary majority of Radev's Progressive Bulgaria party now and the overwhelming majority which his own party, the Union of Democratic Forces, commanded after the 1997 parliamentary elections, Kostov said that in such situations, the public expects sweeping reforms but "bold reforms are never forgiven".

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Quite clear signs are discernible that Prime Minister Rumen Radev will not keep his promise to drive the bandits out of the judicial system, lawyer Mihail Ekimdzhiev says in a video on the YouTube channel of the news website SegaBG.com. Discussing Wednesday's resignation of Borislav Sarafov as National Investigative Service director and deputy prosecutor general, Ekimdzhiev says that the fact that the wishes of the people around Rumen Radev, Delyan Peevski, and to a lesser extent, Boyko Borissov, were granted instantly, showed Radev how the judiciary can be kept docile, obedient and friendly. "A demo is in the making to illustrate the blessings which will heap upon the powerholders if they leave Peevski and Borissov undisturbed and their corruption infrastructure in the judicial system intact," the lawyer comments.

Delyan Peevski, who leads the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, and Boyko Borissov, who chairs the GERB party and is former three-time prime minister, are often blamed for an alleged state capture and rife corruption. Peevski is said to have been pulling the strings of the judiciary. The two leaders and their policies, known as "the Borissov-Peevski model", were targeted during large-scale street protests in late November and early December 2025, which toppled the GERB-dominated three-party government of Prime Minister Rossen Zhelyazkov by December 11.

ECONOMY & WEATHER
 
"Bulgarian Foods, Where Have You Gone?" caps the cover package in the Capital weekly. The magazine warns that the country is losing its food sovereignty as it consumes decreasing amounts of locally grown food and increasing volumes of imported products. It reports a drastic fall in the number of Bulgarian farms, with the government favouring large producers. The effects are often brought to weigh upon end-consumers through high prices, compromised quality and a fading "Bulgarian taste".

One of the articles in the package, titled "Foodocalypse Now", says that all subsectors of Bulgarian agricultural production have seen an epic collapse since the 1990s. The main reasons are bad policies, disintegrating infrastructure, excessive business fragmentation or consolidation, and severe market competition. The tendency continues, accelerated by climate change and geopolitical and economic factors, and endangering entire subsectors.

Maria Nikolova of the vegetable-breeding company Opora Zaden Bulgaria says: "Here, it is very common to work without signing a sale contract in advance. Only after we produce something do we start looking for someone to buy it." Mark Tsekov of the Branch Chamber for Fruit and Vegetables notes: "Many young people who tried to start an agricultural business, later changed their plans and shut down." According to Georgi Stoyanov of the Bulgarian Farmers Union, national and EU subsidies work, but are not a cure-all. Capital suggests that cooperation, irrigation and subsidy reforms are among the measures needed urgently.

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Energy communities, their importance in the transition to a low-carbon economy, and the hurdles they face in Bulgaria, are discussed in a MediaPool.bg interview with Neven Boyanov and Dimitar Morfov, managers of Sonnis Energy Bulgaria, who are carrying over their experience from Germany into the Bulgarian photovoltaic solar power market. Boyanov explains that an energy community is a group of individuals or businesses who together produce, share and consume renewable energy under a joint project. It facilitates larger investments, and some models allow members to save on electricity costs even without an initial investment. The concept is deeply rooted in European law and is one of pillars of the EU energy transition.

Bulgaria is making its first steps in this area, but the potential is huge, Boyanov says. For now, municipal authorities are the only initiators of such undertakings. This is a logical start but the concept is intended to also be applied by individuals, private companies, associations, and groups of owners. According to Morfov, multi-household residential buildings offer a good opportunity for apartment owners to set up energy communities. He argued that a complete liberalization of the national energy market will allow citizens and individual companies to use community-generated electricity much more flexibly than at present. But the lack of complete market liberalization should not serve as an excuse for inaction. Morfov calls on businesses to be pro-active participants in the energy transition. Boyanov urges individuals to join energy communities established either by their local government or privately.

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"Why is Northern Bulgaria under water again?", asks a writer on Trud.bg, discussing massive rain-induced flooding in Sevlievo, Gabrovo, Veliko Tarnovo, Dryanovo and Troyan. The website quotes Prof. Emil Gachev of the Climateka weather platform as saying that the disaster was caused by multiple factors. A specific atmospheric situation combined with some peculiarities of the rivers in the area and their drainage basins caused a rapid rise in water levels, he said.

Between May 21 and 24, a so-called Omega block created an "atmospheric traffic jam". The Arctic polar jet stream curved into meanders, which kept the same air masses over the same regions for long periods. Over the Balkans, the lingering air mass was humid and unstable, which was a prerequisite for heavy rain. In the meantime, Western Europe had sunny and warm weather. From a geographical perspective, flooding along the rivers Yantra and Rossitsa is not surprising. Their fan-shaped drainage basins cause their tributaries to converge at a single point basically, which is why the tidal waves created by torrential rain pile up on one another, bringing the water to critically high levels, Gachev explained.

SOCIETY

Zaimov Park in Sofia will be renamed Oborishte Park because Gen. Vladimir Zaimov (1888-1942) acted as a Soviet spy late in his life, 24chasa.bg reports, quoting a Municipal Council decision. Vladimir Zaimov was the son of Bulgarian educator and revolutionary Stoyan Zaimov, who was closely linked to the 1876 April Uprising of the Bulgarians against Ottoman rule. The general participated in the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) and World War I (1914-1918), and in 1939 placed himself at the service of Soviet intelligence. He was executed by firing squad. In its reasoning for the decision to rename the park, the Municipal Council pointed to the "ambivalent public perception" of Gen. Zaimov's role in history.

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A Ukrainian with protected status in Bulgaria died after feeling sick amid a hotel fire in the Sunny Beach resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, bTV reported on Friday morning. The 64-year-old man was a maintenance employee at the hotel. Other media reports say that the fire claimed two lives.

WORLD

An analysis titled "Orban's Fall and Europe's Rise" by political scientist Ivan Krastev, published on the website of the US magazine Foreign Affairs on May 19, is covered on 24chasa.bg in a Bulgarian translation dated May 27.

The article examines "the dawn of a strange new European consensus" in the wake of the April 12 parliamentary elections in Hungary, which ended the Viktor Orban era. Krastev says that moderate and liberal political observers in Vienna, Brussels, Paris, Berlin, and New York see the crushing defeat of strongman Viktor Orban as signaling the ebbing of global illiberalism. The hope is that where Hungary goes, the world will follow: far-right candidates such as Marine Le Pen, for instance, will not win in France, and the far-right political party Alternative for Germany (AfD) will not triumph in Germany.

But this view is far from reality, the analyst argues. He notes that Peter Magyar, the new prime minister of Hungary, won because of a wave of antiestablishment energy that can just as easily benefit populist contenders in other countries. In the recent Bulgarian elections, for instance, the political party of the former president, Rumen Radev, whom Western media describe as a Russophile and Euroskeptic, ran and won on an anticorruption campaign similar to Magyar's in Hungary—proving that powerful anticorruption rhetoric can bring to power not only Orban's opponents but also the kinds of political leaders usually seen as his allies.

Drawing arguments from international political developments (How Trump lost the European Right; How the Kremlin lost its Europe strategy; How Europe lost its extremes), Krastev concludes that Orban's defeat creates space for a new consensus on European sovereignty—one that could potentially include segments of the national populist camp. At a moment when the radical remaking of the EU is on the agenda, the Hungarian parliamentary elections may prove to be one of the most consequential votes in European politics of the past decade—just not in the way many observers initially thought.