site.btaMedia Review: November 19

OVERVIEW

The Bulgarian National Television morning programme included a report about air pollution in Sofia; the rift in the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (in an interview with Yordan Tsonev, a former right-hand-man to MRF founder Ahmed Dogan and now a member of the rival MRF - New Beginning coalition of Delyan Peevski); and the impressions of Stefan Stoyanov, former politician and Ambassador of Bulgaria to Greece, from a recent visit to the US after the presidential elections.

POLITICS

Telegraph quotes a Nova TV interview with media experts Georgi Lozanov and Georgi Harizanov who seem to agree that electing an MP to chair the National Assembly would hardly be enough to solve the ongoing political crisis. Lozanov said: "When the changes began, the goal was to have a bigger share of the public resources redistributed to the public and not to private interests. The President [Rumen Radev] then intervened to try to back this trend. He, however, introduced another problem, a change in geopolitical orientation. And now we are in a stalemate."

Harizanov was also sceptical about a potential development, as the main points of difference between the parliamentary parties are their geopolitical views, their views of corruption and the judiciary. Harizanov believes that the leader of GERB Boyko Borissov is willing to govern as part of a coalition, however, so far no one is willing to negotiate with his party pragmatically.

Political expert Prof. Svetoslav Malinov told Nova TV: "They [the two largest parliamentary entities, GERB-UDF and Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB)] are not a natural alliance, but political necessity pushes them towards each other [to coalesce]. The question is who would lose more from such a coalition. All other alliances and combinations in this National Assembly are much heavier electorally for both CC-DB and GERB." He added: "A constitutional majority could be reached by the remaining formations. Vazrazhdane will stand aside, because they have isolated themselves. CC-DB and GERB have one problem in common - going to new elections may lead to voters turning against them through a new formation. GERB should treat with the utmost respect that wants of CC-DB and There Is Such a People."

Another expert, Krystian Szkwarek, told Nova TV that an anti-corruption government can be assembled by MECh, Velichie and the far-right Vazrazhdane, because they have never managed state resources.

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Chair of the Association Institute of Modern Politics Borislav Tsekov tells Telegraph that the political parties Democratic Bulgaria and Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria would be wise to distance themselves from Continue the Change (CC), with whom they currently coalesce, as CC is a "toxic party" that would otherwise sink them all.

Tsekov is critical of the notion of a "presidential party", as forming one would allow the Kremlin to pull the strings on the Bulgarian political life while undermining the national democracy.

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Mediapool.bg reports that the caretaker government of Dimitar Glavchev "secretly, right after the parliamentary elections, ‘rewarded’ with over BGN 85.5 million 85 municipalities which have voted en block for the new formation of Delyan Peevski [MRF - New Beginning]". The story’s source is a press release by Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria. A check by Mediapool with the Council of Ministers’ legal system found the transcripts from the government meetings (on November 6 and 13, 2024) where two decisions about the said transfers to the municipalities were made. The proposal for the transfers was made by Finance Minister Lyudmila Petkova.

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Former MP Aleksandar Simov criticizes former Bulgarian Socialist Party leader Korneliya Ninova for choosing to establish her own party. Simov's op-ed published on Duma's front page accuses Ninova of being addicted to power. The author quotes the former leader as saying: "Let us see first what we will be doing and define ourselves – left, centre, conservative. We are pro-family values, pro-children. The profile is not yet determined [...]" The article alleges that Ninova's potential party will be founded not on principles but based on the demands of the political market as confirmed by Ninova's own words.

Meanwhile, Ninova's former party is planning to elect a new leader in January 2025, 24 Chasa reports. The campaign was postponed due to the snap parliamentary on October 27.

SCHENGEN

Dnevnik.bg, among many other news outlets, reports Tuesday morning that Romania and Bulgaria will join fully the Schengen area as of January 2025 after a meeting in Budapest on Friday. The stories quote Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu. On the initiative of the Hungarian Presidency of Council of the EU, the Foreign Ministers of Austria, Bulgaria and Romania will be meeting to discuss the details about a possible lifting of the Austrian veto on the two Balkan countries’ entry in Schengen by land, says Dnevnik.

Mediapool.bg also has the story, but it says that Ciolacu was speaking only about his country joining Schengen and did not mention Bulgaria.

BNR quotes diplomatic sources in Brussels, who said that an attempt will be made in Budapest to come to a decision rather than making a final decision. The BNR sources said that a decision can only be made at a Foreign Affairs Council by all EU foreign ministers, and a Council meeting is due on December 12. They also said that Hungary will try to convince Austria to give the green light to the Schengen entry of Bulgaria and Romania for land travel.

FIANANCE AND ECONOMY

Dnevnik.bg reports the plans of the Finance Ministry for the 2024 state budget. Details of it were made public by Finance Minister Lyudmila Petkova on Monday. The Dnevnik headline is Finance Ministry Intends to Replenish Public Purse via Amnesty on Unpaid Taxes.

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According to data from the Bulgarian National Bank quoted by Trud and Telegraph, direct foreign investments in Bulgaria between January and September 2024 amounted to EUR 1.24 billion, a decrease by EUR 2.139 billion or 63.3% compared to the same period of the previous year.

A story in Capital.bg reports the conclusions in a Report on Private Investment in Bulgaria and South Eastern Europe 2024, prepared by the Bulgarian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association in partnership with the European Investment Bank and the consultancy PwC. It says that Southeastern Europe is witnessing more and more mergers and acquisitions, as Bulgaria is establishing itself as a local entrepreneurial hub with its well-developed startup ecosystem. "Between 2019 and 2023, the region attracted EUR 4 billion in investment, with EUR 1 billion of that going towards funding startups in Bulgaria. However, the vast majority of funds are still going to early-stage businesses, while opportunities for companies at a more mature stage of growth are more limited. This year and next year are generally shaping up to be more challenging due to the declining number of funds actively investing," the report reads.

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An article in 24 Chasa based on data from the National Statistical Institute predicts that while salaries will continue to increase in the coming years, the annual rate of increase will drop from 19% to 7 to 9%. The reason is that inflation, which used to be a significant factor in Bulgaria's economy, is no longer as high. In the absence of significant inflation, the main factor on the labour market will be the insufficient labour force.

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Plamen Dimitrov, head of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria (CITUB) told bTV that there is a balanced way to solve the deficit in the state treasury without raising taxes and freezing wages. He was adamant that unless this is achieved, the trade union will organize mass protests. Dimitrov added: "We expect, we demand, and we have spoken to the Finance Minister [Lyudmila Petkova] repeatedly. [...] What we have clearly stated and have received agreement from her at least, is for a horizontal policy of 10% increase of all salaries. I expect protests from all those who do not get what they are promised by law - here are the teachers, higher education, many ministries and agencies that are on the brink [of collapse] and healthcare."

The trade union insists on a monthly minimum wage of BGN 1,077, stressing that this decision has already been voted and should not undergo changes. The organization also demands a minimum 10% increase to wages in the public sector.

Duma and Trud report that teachers demand higher pay to be provided with the new state budget. The Podkrepa Labour Confederation reached out to more than 8,000 of its members working in the education system, and 51% of them expressed readiness to protest, if their wages do not get increased in response to the higher minimum wage that will take effect starting January 2025.

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Pensions in July 2025 will likely increase by 9.6 to 9.7% according to reports from the Ministry of Finance quoted by Telegraph. Previous reports suggested that this increase would only be 8.7%. This means that monthly minimum pension in Bulgaria will hit BGN 637.

The Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) has an interview with former labour and social policy minister Hristina Hristova who warns of an impending crisis for the financial resilience of the Bulgarian pension system, and it "will affect everybody". She said that the problems built up in the past 3-4 years, partly due to political instability and the fact that the political parties are constantly in "campaign" mode. "Of all pensions-related changes in the past four years, none was based on the key social insurance principle: the individual contributions one makes in the system." She said there was a lot of populism in these changes.

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Also on BNR, Atanas Katsarchev, the chief economist of the Podkrepa Labour Confederation, is quoted as saying that the working poor in Bulgaria increased by 50% in the recent years, from 8% to nearly 12%. "It shows that despite the increase in the minimum wage, the fight against poverty has been a total failure, and we remain at the bottom of the rankings in terms of wages. We see that there has been no change in the purchasing power of either the minimum wage or of households. In other words, all the efforts that are being touted by the political system are not having a real effect against poverty in the country. The people remain poor. We can see this in the statistics - nearly 48% of households are below the poverty line, excluding social transfers, which is a huge share. That's half the households," he said.

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Trud's front page reports that payday lenders will likely be forced to reimburse their clients. Head of the Commission for Consumer Protection (CCP) Maria Filipova told the daily that the CCP has investigated all non-bank financial institutions and established a wide range of illicit contract clauses to the detriment of the borrowers. Some lenders, for example, would charge BGN 50 for each day of overdue loan payment. The Commissions was also alerted of cases where the borrower would get a call every 30 minutes with demands to pay back their loan. The CCP is planning to bring up class action lawsuits against some payday lenders within days, Filipova reported.

The paper quotes data from the Bulgarian National Bank, according to which loans from payday lenders between January 1 and September 30, 2024, totalled BGN 6.314 billion, registering a 20.1% increase year-on-year.

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According to data from the National Revenue Agency released by Mediapool and quoted by Duma, the restaurant industry is among the most favoured ones in Bulgaria with a generated turnover of BGN 5.6 billion in 2023, which resulted in just BGN 43 million, or less than 1%, paid to the state as VAT. The article points out that in the early days of the COVID pandemic, then prime minister Boyko Borissov gave in to lobby pressure and slashed the VAT on the hospitality industry from 20 to 9%, arguing that establishments should be reimbursed for their temporary closure. The VAT rate has remained unchanged since then, even though COVID is no longer a significant factor. While the head of the Bulgarian Association of Restaurants, Richard Alibegov, told the Bulgarian National Television in late October that restaurants should be taxed less, as their profits are diminished by paying for manual labour, Duma argues that the total corporate tax paid by restaurants in the pre-pandemic 2019 of BGN 25.5 million was more than tripled in 2023 to BGN 91.4 million, suggesting that profits are in fact much higher. Turnover has also increased from BGN 3.08 billion in 2019 to BGN 5.65 billion last year.

TRANSPORT

Telegraph reports that the trade union of railway workers at CITUB is demanding an urgent meeting with the caretaker Minister of Transport and Communications Krasimira Stoyanova in order to discuss the procedure for choosing a new railway carrier and the one-year extension of the contract between the state and BDZ (Bulgarian State Railways) Passengers EOOD. The trade union is dissatisfied with the lack of social dialogue.

JUSTICE

Mediapool.bg reproduces the highlights of a lecture by former European Court of Human Rights Justice Yonko Grozev with a comparative analysis of institutional control on the prosecution service. The headline of Mediapool is Why Bulgaria Does Worse than Iran in Investigating Abuse of Power. The article reads: "It [the prosecution service] is an institution that has access to more than adequate resources, is ineffective in its core business, and strikingly inefficient in investigating crimes of corruption and abuse of state power. What is particularly impressive is the failure of the prosecution service to control and sanction other authorities. The most popular mantra (endlessly repeated) seeking to justify the existing model of the prosecution service is that it guarantees its independence so that it can control other authorities. What we are actually seeing, however, is just the opposite."

SOFIA-SKOPJE RELATIONS

In an op-ed by Kostadin Filipov published by Trud, the author argues that the process of amending the Constitution of the Republic of North Macedonia should not be as difficult, as the country declared its independence on September 8, 1991, and has amended its supreme legal document eight times since then. Filipov's article seems to be referring to the Treaty of Friendship, Goodneighbourliness and Cooperation between Bulgaria and North Macedonia, which provides for North Macedonia to include Bulgarians as a protected minority in its Constitution as a prerequisite for Bulgaria to unblock North Macedonia's path to the EU.

WORLD

The international pages of the Tuesday media outlets report the G20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro, US President-elect Donald Trump’s personnel picks and the decision of the Biden administration to give a green light to the use of ATACAMS long-range missiles for attacks inside Russian territory.

Dnevnik.bg reports that the world’s biggest 20 economies promised to tax more their wealthiest citizens but failed to make any substantial process for deblocking the talks at the COP29 climate change conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, where a decision was expected to be made who would pay for adjusting to climate change. 

Capital.bg has a story about the US President-elect titled Trump Is Forming Government Based on Loyalty. It says that he had already announced key picks for his administration; that the names show a focus on migration and foreign policy; and that all his choices so far have been based on the loyalty of the potential officeholders.

BNR, among other media outlets, quotes Josep Borrell, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, as saying that he is convinced all EU Member States will follow the US example and lift the restrictions on use by Ukraine of weapons for attacks inside Russia.

HEALTHCARE

Prosecutor Desislava Petrova from the Sofia City Prosecution Office reported in a spread interview for 24 Chasa that the number of beds in Sofia's psychiatric wards is critically low, which creates significant strain among those working in the field and could lead to an early collapse of the system. Petrova said that the number of beds in the capital should be doubled at least. She added that conditions in psychiatric wards and hospitals can only be improved by a package of measures, some of which should be aimed at improving staff job satisfaction. This will naturally lead to an improved work quality.

Petrova warns: "There are alarming figures established by the temporary committee of the National Assembly, which show that for every 100 000 people, there are 1,690 patients under the supervision of psychiatric institutions. This figure does not include people who are diagnosable but have not sought help or have relied on alternative medicine. Even more disturbing are studies that suggest that one in four to five youth meet the criteria for a mental disorder for life. According to studies by the World Health Organization, about 25 to 30% of initial contacts with the health network are triggered by some mental distress."

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A headline in Dnevnik.bg reads Bulgarians Live Shortest Lives in EU and Usually Die of Heart Disease. The story is based on a new EC and OECD report on the health status of Europeans. The report is published once in two years. It shows that Bulgarians live 75.8 years on average, down from 81.5 years for all Europeans. The longest living Europeans are in Spain (84 years), Italy (83.8 years) and Malta (83.6 years).