site.btaVice President Iotova Meets with Frankfurt Mayor Feldmann, Bulgarian Community

109 POLITICS - VICE PRESIDENT - FRANKFURT - MEETING ampl.

Vice President Iotova
Meets with Frankfurt Mayor
Feldmann, Bulgarian Community

May 29 (BTA) - Frankfurt-am-Main Mayor Peter Feldmann welcomed Bulgarian Vice President Iliana Iotova with a message to Bulgaria. "Frankfurt is the place where Bulgarians are
welcome to live and to develop their career. We are proud of our Bulgarian fellow-citizens. They are hard-working and ambitious. They protect their identity and are well integrated at the same
 time," he said as quoted by the Bulgarian President's Press Secretariat on Wednesday.

Iotova is on a two-day working visit to Germany on the invitation of Ingo-Endrick Lankau, Bulgarian Honorary Consul in federal state Hesse, and the Bulgarian community, starting Tuesday.

Vice President Iotova said she was grateful that the Frankfurt administration takes care of the Bulgarian community. She asked for cooperation in providing rooms for the classes of the
Saturday and Sunday schools, an issue that Bulgarians shared at a meeting with Iotova.

Frankfurt is a city where over 200 languages are spoken, half of the citizens are not born there and 70-80 per cent of children are with a migrant background. Peter Feldmann noted that immigrants manage to integrate as they do not enclose themselves in their communities.

Iotova underlined that Frankfurt's model could serve as an example to many cities in Europe.

Official data shows that registered Bulgarians in Germany total a little over 300,000, of which nearly 130,000 are registered in the Frankfurt-am-Main Consulate.

The Vice President also conferred with members of the Bulgarian community in Frankfurt-am-Main, where she attended observances of the Day of Bulgarian Education and Culture and of Slav Letters, traditionally marked on May 24. 

Iotova noted that May 24 is the most unifying holiday, as all Bulgarians, regardless of where in the world they are, come together to the sound of a Bulgarian song about the National Revival.

She extended her special thanks to Bulgarian Consul in Frankfurt Stefan Dimitrov and to Bulgaria's Honorary Consul in the State of Hessen, Ingo-Endrick Lankau, for their active dedication to
the relations between the two countries and the two peoples, as well as for their attention to the Bulgarian community.

This year, Bulgaria and Germany celebrate the 140th anniversary of their diplomatic relations. Iotova underscored the intensive political dialogue and the good bilateral relations that still have a potential for development.

In her address, Iotova also commented on the results of the European Parliament elections, noting that European citizens gave a lesson to the whole political system and that this lesson
must be learned. RY, IG/TH


/ДЛ/