site.btaMedia Review: October 17

POLITICS & JUSTICE

Delyan Peevski, who has been sanctioned by the United States for corruption under the Global Magnitsky Act, became Co-Floor Leader of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) parliamentary group, MediaPool.bg says. According to the news report, a brief announcement on the MRF website does not make it clear what caused the change.

It is not surprising, though, MediaPool.bg adds. It says that, recently, Peevski has acted as the MRF leader, and everyone else seems to have taken it for granted. GERB leader Boyko Borissov brought the MRF - more specifically, Peevski - into the ruling majority, formed initially by GERB and Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria after the October 2022 parliamentary elections. Peevski has taken on the role of mouthpiece for the MRF and the entire ruling majority, the story says. He makes daily statements on current affairs for the journalists covering the work of the National Assembly. He is practically behaving as everyone's boss, particularly with regard to MRF Chairman Mustafa Karadayi, who has faded into the background and rarely appears in the media, although he is in the middle of a nationwide campaign tour ahead of the local elections on October 29.

The decision for Peevski to become MRF Co-Floor Leader comes amid ongoing speculation that Karadayi is to be replaced at the helm of the party, the story says.

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Judges at the Sofia City Court protest against what they see as unprincipled promotions at the higher-instance Sofia Appellate Court, SegaBG.com reports, quoting an alert in which magistrates ask Supreme Cassation Court President Galina Zaharova to order a check. The discontented judges, who include experts in criminal, civil and commercial law, are unhappy about the way that Sofia Appellate Court President Daniela Doncheva has posted judges from the Sofia City Court. They argue that the postings are non-transparent.

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The Russian Consulate General in the Bulgarian Black Sea city of Varna is closed, according to a report published on OffNews.bg and quoted in other media. According to unconfirmed information, the contract with the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry, which owns the building, expires on November 1. The website notes that the movement of people and vehicles from the Consulate has been quite intense over the last couple of weeks.

The functions of the Consulate were considerably reduced after Bulgaria expelled dozens of diplomats and administrative staff in July 2022, the story goes. In a Facebook post dated September 2, 2023, the institution said that on October 2 it would stop receiving and issuing documents. The announcement was reposted on October 2, but is missing at present.

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The EU accession treaty with Bulgaria should be renegotiated, according to an analysis in Trud. The author, Vesselin Kirov, argues that the EU was supposed to be for Bulgaria what communist ideology had failed to be for 45 years. But the reality is quite different. Today, 16 years after Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007, the country has lost 1.2 million of its population; a number of economic sectors such as energy, agriculture, heavy and light industry have been neglected and almost ruined; and Bulgaria relies ever more heavily on imports rather than domestic production.

The main reasons are that the country's economy was uncompetitive around the time it joined the bloc, and the accession treaty, signed in April 2005, left something to be desired, the author says. Neither now nor in 2007 Bulgarian industry has or had corporations like Renault, BASF, Bayer or Philips, but it possessed, and still possesses, the potential to be a leader in other sectors such as foods, Kirov writes. However, the 2005 treaty imposed restrictions on Bulgarian agriculture. It set limits on the processing of tomatoes and peaches, which were, respectively, eight and 17 times lower than the limits imposed on neighbouring Turkey, a country with far less arable land than Bulgaria. Restrictions were also imposed on the tailoring industry.

The author wonders what principles the European experts used in writing the treaty. He notes that Eastern European countries, referred to as "the new member states", have been underprivileged compared with Western European economies.

He cites data of the 1980s showing Bulgaria's potential for domestic production and exports. The Bulgarian politicians who were negotiating for the country's accession to the EU were aware of these indicators. Therefore, the quotas agreed for Bulgaria raise doubts. They show that the Bulgarian politicians were prepared to accept EU membership at all costs. The saddest part is that no one among the Bulgarian MEPs or other Bulgarian EU officials during these 16 years has initiated a re-negotiation of the quotas, which are damaging not only to Bulgaria but to EU consumers as well, Kirov concludes.

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"The amazing similarities between Bulgarian and Israeli politics" are discussed by journalist Valeri Naidenov in 24 Chasa. According to Naidenov, the apparent failure of "the world's best intelligence agency" to detect the planning of Hamas' attacks on Israel was due to a "non-stop political roundabout" in Israel. Frequent political elections, a new parliament every year (if not every few months), new reforms, and staff changes in the special services - that is to say, Bulgarian-style chaos on Israeli soil, the author says.

This kind of chaos is well-known in Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium and almost every other country whose election system is based on party lists of candidates, Naidenov goes on to say. This kind of centrifugal election system can chop up the political space into hundreds of parties which come into conflict with one another, but later find themselves locked in an embrace with their opponents and make rather amorphous coalitions. The only difference is that the Bulgarian parties do not have a Hamas to get them united.

LAW & ORDER

Based on dashboard camera footage, the traffic police may impose a fine for an illegitimate vehicle maneuver or a red light offense, but not for speeding, 24 Chasa says in its main story. The offender's vehicle license number must be clearly visible in the video, and the person who made the video is required to present a declaration. So far this year, Sofianites have submitted over 2,000 alerts about violations of traffic rules, the daily says.

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A new series of bomb hoaxes at schools was discussed on the morning talk show of Nova TV. Hundreds of students were evacuated from the Tourism School in the Danubian city of Ruse. In the south of Bulgaria, the authorities in Stara Zagora and Burgas decided that classes could continue. Schools in a total of six cities received bomb threats on Monday.

Lachezar Milushev, Deputy Head of the Centre for the Study of Extremism and Nationalism, said on Nova TV that this latest spate of school bomb hoaxes comes ahead of the local elections at the end of the month, similarly to the previous series of threats. Initially, every such threat is assumed to be true, the expert said. It is up to the headmaster of the school to decide whether the kids should be evacuated or not, Milushev added.

ECONOMY & HEALTH

A memorandum on the construction of Reactor Unit 7 at the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant is to be signed on Thursday, Trud predicts. Five companies have been invited: Glavbolgarstroy (GBS), Energo Service AD, Enpro Consult EOOD, EQE AD, and Oscar EOOD. The memorandum will be signed at the American Chamber of Commerce in Bulgaria in the presence of US Ambassador to Sofia Kenneth Merten.

Kozloduy, the only nuclear power plant in Bulgaria, has two operational reactors, units 5 and 6. The four older units were decommissioned as a condition for the country's accession to the EU.

The daily further says that the Energy Ministry deadline for the construction of Unit 7 is 2030. The paper recalls that, in mid-June 2023, US company Westinghouse said it had signed a front-end engineering and design contract with Kozloduy for building a new AP1000 reactor at the site of the plant.

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Bulgarian Socialist Party leader Kornelia Ninova accused GERB leader Boyko Borissov of lying about the government debt and suggested that Borissov's fellow party members should not put up with his lies, Duma reports on page one. Ninova quoted Borissov as writing in a Facebook post: "We have learned from the media that [Finance] Minister Vassilev wants to assume new debt. The amount of the planned debt is unclear. We are waiting to see just how indebted we get."

The Socialist leader commented: "I wonder why the GERB MPs let themselves be fooled by Borissov every day. The new debt was approved by GERB's votes. Sixty-three GERB MPs approved BGN 7.5 billion in new government debt - Article 69, Paragraph 1 of the State Budget Act. If GERB voted against, the state would not have sunk deeper and deeper into debt. Borissov asks who is to blame. There can be only one answer: you are."

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The newly introduced electronic prescriptions have caused much trouble to patients, doctors and pharmacists, Trud reports in its main story. Patients cannot see the prescriptions, and so they are in the dark about their doctor's instructions on how to use the medicines. They can only count on the goodwill of pharmacists to tell them that. Furthermore, the system is too slow, and pharmacists often tell patients that their electronic prescription has not been received yet. A patient who had a medical examination at an emergency medical care centre on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday does not know what medicines have been prescribed for them. The information is not available to their personal physician either.