site.btaMedia Review: September 13

OVERVIEW

All dailies report on GERB leader Boyko Borissov who on Thursday said that if parties and their leaders fail to propose governance, then finding an impartial person to become a prime minister able to run programmes and elect ministers may prove to be impossible.

Another story that dominates the print media is the ongoing crisis in the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) that has the party seemingly split into two fractions, one united around the figure of Delyan Peevski and the other around Ahmed Dogan. An op-ed by former Bulgarian Socialist Party MP Aleksandar Simov on Duma's front page goes as far as to state: "The MRF died. Let us not fool ourselves. The three-letter initialism that Peevski won has nothing to do with the MRF from the beginning of Bulgaria's transition to democracy. The leftovers with Dogan will never be the same either."

EUROPEAN UNION

Trud has published an op-ed whose author Veselin Kirov warns that a premature breakdown of the European Union should not be ruled out considering the Union's goal to expand to 37 Member States. The article reads: "Recently, the applications of Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia to enter Europe were approved, in addition to those of Turkiye, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Albania. [...] The EU is currently at a crossroads. There is no consensus on the future of the Union, which is increasingly becoming a quasi-federal political entity due to its gradual transformation from an economic into a political community. The main crises facing Europeans at the moment are deindustrialization, migration and financial instability.

"Deindustrialization is mainly caused by the conflict in Ukraine, for which the EU, instead of being a mediator, took the role of a sponsor of an undemocratic Kyiv regime, which banned the opposition in the country, expelled Ukraine from the Council of Europe and cancelled the regular presidential and any other elections. The EU has imposed hundreds of sanctions on Russia in a total of 13 packages, thereby cutting off its main source of cheap raw materials, which for years had fuelled European industry.

"It has been estimated that the German economy, in just one year since the start of the conflict in Ukraine, lost over EUR 100 billion (2.5% of the country's GDP) due to rising electricity prices. Things are no better in France, where the losses by the end of 2023 were around EUR 50 billion."

According to Kirov, for the EU to once again be the centre of global industry, the war in Ukraine must be stopped by coming to the negotiating table in Switzerland; trade ties between the EU and Russia must be restored, and a new cooperation treaty must be signed based on mutual security guarantees and fair competition; infrastructure projects that used to supply Europe with cheap energy must be restored; alternative energy markets must be sought to avoid the monopoly of a single external supplier for the EU.

REAL ESTATE

24 Chasa reports that a candidate for a mortgage loan of BGN 200,000 with a repayment term of 30 years at an interest rate of 2.89% would have a realistic chance of approval only with a monthly salary of BGN 1,800 at least, as their monthly payment would be BGN 830. Housing that goes for less than BGN 200,000 is hard to come by in Bulgaria's largest cities. Starting October 2024, the Bulgarian National Bank's new rules on mortgages are coming into effect, which means that banks would be able to loan up to 85% of the property value, the repayment term can be no longer than 30 years, and the monthly payment can be no more than 50% of the individual's monthly income.

ENERGY

An article in Telegraph reports on a public discussion organized by the Energy and Water Regulatory Commission of the Sofiyska Voda AD water and sewerage operator's business plan, which provides for the price of tap water in Sofia to rise from BGN 2.936 per cu m, VAT included, to BGN 3.52 per cu m as of October 1, 2024. That would be 20% higher compared to the current price, which has been unchanged since 2021. Lyubomir Filipov, Strategic Partnerships and Regulation Director at Sofiyska Voda, said that his company is working to implement the most massive investment programme in the country, even though the capital enjoys some of the cheapest tap water across in Bulgaria. He added that if the new price gets approved, Sofia's water will become the fourth cheapest in the country.

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Telegraph's front page reports that some 1 million cu m of firewood will be burned in Bulgaria over the upcoming cold months. Bulgaria's State Forestry Enterprises have already sold some 530,000 cu m, as confirmed by the Ministry of Agriculture. According to the daily, 5 to 6 cu m of firewood should be sufficient to last for the autumn and winter, which would cost between BGN 650 and 800 depending on the type of wood and the particular seller. This price does not include having the logs chopped or transported to the buyer's residence.

TOURISM

Telegraph quotes data from the National Statistical Institute, according to which 325,480 Bulgarian tourists have visited Bulgaria's Black Sea coast this summer, or 7,500 fewer compared to the previous year. Hotels across the country have seen 19,000 Bulgarians fewer in July 2024 year-on-year. The average length of their stay in July has dropped from 3.2 nights to 2.7 nights. On the other hand, the number of foreigners who stayed in a Bulgarian hotel in July was 794,000, an increase of 3.6% year-on-year. About 75% of them stayed in a 4- or a 5-star hotel compared to less than 40% of the Bulgarian tourists. As a result, Bulgarian tourists paid BGN 90 per night in a hotel compared to BGN 130 paid by their foreign counterparts.

Trud adds that the total occupancy of beds in accommodation in Bulgaria in July 2024 was 57.4%, increasing by 1.6 percentage points compared to a year earlier. The highest occupancy of beds was in 4- and 5-star accommodation with 72.8%, followed by 52% in 3-star accommodation and 35.2% in 1- and 2-star establishments.

EDUCATION

Diyan Stamatov, head of the Union of Employers in the Public Education System (SRSNPB), said in an interview for Trud that yet another school year begins with almost no change to guide education towards improving children's language literacy, practical skills, digital freedom, flexible thinking or critical communication. Stamatov said: "We are waiting for the changes that need a national consensus to be materialized in legal and regulatory amendments. Expectations that have been delayed for several years as a consequence of the problems in the governance of the country." According to the expert, the realistic time frame for new curricula is 3 to 4 years from now, and for quality standards, even further out.

On the topic of modern technologies in education, Stamatov said: "In favour or against mobile devices in school is a fashionable question for the grown-ups. While older adults are enjoying Facebook, younger teachers and parents are on Instagram, and students are on TikTok. [...] ChatGPT-4 (AI) has been doing real wonders for a year now - recreating scenarios after capture, building bridges, proposing hypotheticals, even presenting elective platforms. The progress has been tremendous over the past 3-4 years. Instead of bans, it would be bold and quite responsible to work towards using all technologies in education, for information, for progress. Publishers and authors have the biggest role - to create bold and attractive educational content. Immediately after them come teachers - to know, to present and apply all the latest. [...] We are falling behind in our country, terribly behind. In a generation's time, a student without a flexible digital mindset, who does not know two foreign languages or lacks strong communication skills would not be competitive."

Another teacher, Darina Bakardzhieva, said in an interview for Duma that boosting children's motivation to read can be a challenge, especially in the current era of digital technologies. To tackle this problem, up to and including 4th grade students cannot use mobile phones in school.

The main topic of this week's issue of Capital is Childhood in the Digital World. An article on the matter reads: "With the entire global entertainment industry vibrating in students' pockets, teachers and principals are rightly worried that they can hardly attract [students'] attention to the educational process." As there is a partial ban on mobile phones in schools – the devices must stay in the students' backpacks during classes – the article continues: "Parents and education experts worry that the bans are a hastily devised solution to a very complex problem that also requires much more serious involvement of all adults in the chain - parents, teachers, regulators, governments. Because they place the responsibility entirely on those who are most vulnerable to the dark sides of the internet and least equipped to resist them - children.

"European Parliament figures show that one in three Internet users is under 18. In the EU, most children use their smartphones on a daily basis, and almost twice as much as 10 years ago. They are also using them at a much younger age, and they are bypassing the minimum age of 13 to make social networking profiles.

"They cope more than adeptly in this environment. They use Instagram and TikTok instead of online search engines to look for answers to the questions that interest them. They educate themselves on all sorts of topics with 'how to' videos on YouTube. The big problem is that this online social medium that they have such easy access to was not originally designed for them."

Capital points out that even Elon Musk warned parents to limit the amount of time their children spend on social networks because they have been programmed by artificial intelligence to maximize the release of dopamine. To put it another way, tech companies' algorithms stimulate children's still-developing brains to feel a sense of pleasure and enjoyment from the constant scrolling, swiping, liking and incessant notifications

HEALTHCARE

Trud's front page report that a ban on gender reassignment for children has been proposed by six Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) MPs in draft amendments to the Child Protection Act. The daily seems to take umbrage with the proposed bills leaving a loophole for seemingly medical exceptions, as the text reads: "It is banned to perform medical actions to change the phenotypic and other sex characteristics of the genotypic sex of minors, except in cases where there is a serious danger to their life and health." Lawyer Rostislava Zekova called the proposed amendments a Trojan Horse. Prof. Alexey Savov, who heads the Specialized Hospital for Active Treatment in Obstetrics and Gynecology "Maichin Dom", told Trud that the lawmakers have not specified which diseases would necessitate a sex change. He added: "We encounter a variety of similar deficits, but these do not require a sex change directly, but rather explain why there is a difference between external and internal sex characteristics. The external sex characteristics may be of a female, but there are no ovaries or a uterus. Or there is such a formation, a mixture between ovaries and testicles, the so-called ovotestis. But this does not necessitate a sex change. Corrections are most often necessary in such cases." Savov reported that MPs have not been called to Bulgarian geneticists to discuss which sex reassignment interventions are related to the individual's health. He concluded: "Having classic female sex or classic male sex changed has never been discussed. Adjustments are necessary partially for certain discrepancies, but this is not a sex change."