site.btaMedia Review: February 16

POLITICS

"Rotation for Dummies," caps the cover story in the Capital weekly (with the phrase "for dummies" appearing in English). The items under this common headline discuss the upcoming rotation between the two groups sharing in the government. The rotation is expected to take place on March 6, when Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Mariya Gabriel will probably take over as prime minister from Nikolay Denkov, and Denkov will likely become deputy prime minister and a minister.

As the date draws near, tensions in the government majority rise high, as expected, the magazine says. According to a recent public opinion poll conducted by Market Links, Gabriel is the highest-ranked minister in the present government, and Boyko Borissov, the leader of the GERB party which put Gabriel in the government, is the top-rated politician. This, according to the magazine, allows Borissov to choose what is better for GERB, rotation or early elections. There is also a third option which should not be underestimated: it is possible to keep the status-quo of the last nine months. The third scenario may prove the most advantageous for GERB.

The foreign minister's office suddenly acquired great importance in the negotiations for the rotation, the story goes. The fact that the partners in the government buried the hatchet on Wednesday and left Denkov and Gabriel to settle the issue about switching posts, indicates a possibility for a win-win solution. In this game of appearances, GERB and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) control some of the ministries but do not want to admit it publicly. They want some of the ministers to be replaced, but do not say it openly, because it could cause mobilization of the forces around Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB). Even if MRF Floor Leader Delyan Peevski is elected co-chair of the party at the MRF national conference on February 24, the party will hardly seek to share officially in the executive government, according to the analysis.

Sociologist Zhivko Georgiev says in a comment for Capital that if there have been any benefits from participating in the proverbial "assemblage" (the government formula, also known as a "non-coalition"), these benefits have largely been exhausted, and from now on the partners can only expect political damage from the formula. The format is becoming increasingly inconvenient for the CC-DB, because they have sustained the biggest loss, reputation-wise, and the European elections in June will probably expose their waning influence, Georgiev says. As for GERB, it has used up the "laundering" effects which made it want to be a partner in such a government in the first place.

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The local election result of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) in Sofia was good, but it took the BSP members of the new Municipal Council "four hours and four committees" to reduce it to zero, BSP Chair Kornelia Ninova said in a televised interview, as quoted in the main story in Duma. Ninova accused the Socialist members of the Sofia Municipal Council of compromising their dignity and moral principles by taking the side of those who cut the Soviet Army Monument to pieces. The argument that the work of the Municipal Council needed unblocking was not a valid excuse, because the votes of Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria - Save Sofia were enough for the purpose, Ninova said. "Sofianites did not elect you to restore the Borissov model," she noted, referring to the longtime domination of ex-mayor and ex-prime minister Boyko Borissov's GERB party in the Sofia Municipal Council.

ILLICIT DRUGS

A drug-positive result of an onsite test should not be considered a valid reason to punish someone for drug driving unless the result is confirmed, Academician Dobrin Svinarov, laboratory chief at Sofia's Alexandrovska Hospital, tells 24 Chasa in an interview which is the main item in the daily. According to him, a test conducted by traffic police by the roadside can show that a driver has used narcotic substances, but the result may be due to the use of legal medicines and some food ingredients. Svinarov says there is no experimental proof in Bulgaria about the types of medicines which are likely to give a false drug-positive test result on the site. He goes on to argue that if you took a substance 15 minutes before the test, the test will show indisputably that the substance was used, but it cannot prove that the substance had an effect.

The expert notes that drivers in Bulgaria do not have many possibilities to defend themselves if they falsely test positive for drugs. He calls for building a system of confirmatory testing laboratories which are independent from the Interior Ministry and can make the necessary analyses reliably and quickly.

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Bulgaria has a serious problem with drug and alcohol addiction among the young generation, 24 Chasa says. The daily presents data provided by Zhelyaz Turlakov, who heads the non-governmental Centre for Rehabilitation and Psychotherapy for Dependences and Eating Disorders, and Simeon Parlapanov, a psychotherapist, both of whom have experience in working with drug users. They quote a US State Department report which says that 300,000 Bulgarians, or 4.6% of the country's population, use narcotic drugs daily or temporarily. Bulgarian children try drugs at the youngest age in Europe, at 12 to 14 years old, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.

ECONOMY & HEALTH

The change in geopolitical attitudes has made the situation in the nuclear energy industry much clearer: Russia is no longer an option, and everything is possible with the United States, the Capital weekly says. It notes that Kozloduy, Bulgaria's only operational nuclear power plant, has a chance in this situation. This was confirmed earlier in the week, when Bulgaria assumed an official commitment to the US government for what is the largest investment project in this country's recent history: the building of two new nuclear reactor units at Kozloduy.

Whether Bulgaria needs new nuclear power capacity is another matter, the story goes. What is important in this case is obviously the message to the partners. The problem is that the project will cost Bulgaria approximately BGN 30 billion. This is 10 times the price of TurkStream, seven times the money for the whole Hemus Motorway, or 12 times the cost of the first batch of F-16 fighter aircraft to be supplied by the US.

At a meeting of the Bulgarian government on February 12 Energy Minister Rumen Radev and US Assistant Secretary of Energy Andrew Light signed an intergovernmental agreement on cooperation for the project to build a nuclear capacity at the site of the Kozloduy N-Plant, the publication recalls. Unofficially, this means that Bulgaria is definitively committed to paying US company Westinghouse for the equipment and handing it the key to the site for the future Reactor Units 7 and 8. There is undoubtedly a strong political overtone to the agreement as it positions Bulgaria as a partner to the US not only in the field of security but also in energy, which, up until now, was invariably dominated by Russia. We can safely say that it is a commitment for the centuries - the construction, operation and decommissioning will take decades, which proves that the US corporate community is taking over the market share lost by Russia, just as in the case of natural gas.

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Petrol and diesel fuel prices will rise due to a European Commission decision to include land vehicles in the emissions trading system, Trud predicts in its main story. The rise is estimated at between BGN 0.50 per litre and BGN 0.80, the daily learned from Bulgarian Petroleum and Gas Association President Svetoslav Benchev. The European Commission also wants people to pay more for the energy used to heat and cool buildings. The implementation of the EU's green policy will depend on the outcome of the European Parliament elections in June, the paper says.

In Bulgaria, MPs of Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria, GERB and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms have moved amendments to the Climate Change Mitigation Act aimed to establish a new eco charge on the import of a range of materials and products such as iron and steel, cast iron pipes and aluminium ropes and pipes. The idea is that the importers should pay for carbon emission quotas in the same way as if the materials and products originated from the EU. This will protect EU producers from imports from countries where there are no emission trading requirements and will discourage EU companies from outsourcing their production to such countries.

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The President of the Federation of Consumers, Emil Georgiev, said on the morning talk show of BNT1, the main channel of Bulgarian National Television, that Bulgarian consumers are offered the worst conditions of mobile telecom service in the whole EU. He urged mobile service subscribers to file complaints, which would warrant class action. Georgiev noted that subscribers are not in a position to challenge the clauses of their mobile telecom service contracts. If they decide to switch to another operator, it will offer them the same conditions, which attests to the existence of a cartel agreement.

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A poll conducted at the Medical University of Sofia (MUS) shows an increase in the share of graduating medical students who want to work as general practitioners, Trud says. The percentage among the MUS Class of 2023 (which will graduate formally on February 20, 2024) is 9%, compared with 8% in 2022 and 5.9% in 2021. An impressive 62.5% of respondents in the poll say they want to pursue a career in Bulgaria, marking a 10-year high. The reason which young medics provide most often for choosing to work in Bulgaria is their national self-awareness. The second most important reason is that their family and friends live here, and the third one is that they feel a moral obligation to their country.