site.btaBulgaria, Romania Have Been Together in Europe Centuries Before EU, Says BTA Director General

Bulgaria and Romania have been together in Europe for centuries before the European Union (EU), but their EU membership removed all borders between them, said Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) Director General Kiril Valchev during a cross-border conference as part of BTA's Europe on Balkans: Cohesion Skills project. The conference took place at the BTA National Press Club here on Tuesday.

Valchev noted that April has a symbolic meaning for both countries, as the treaty for their EU accession was approved almost exactly 20 years ago by the European Parliament on April 13, 2005 and then signed on April 25, 2005 in Luxembourg. In April 2024, the air and water border controls between the two countries and the EU were abolished, before both countries were fully accepted in Schengen in 2025.

"Even before the borders between Bulgaria and Romania were abolished with the entry into Schengen, the national news agencies of Bulgaria and Romania - BTA and Agerpres, respectively - set an example by abolishing the barriers to today's knowledge in both countries, as the common past requires us to know our present better and because sometimes we look like distant relatives," he emphasized. He pointed out that the two agencies have been together in the European Alliance of News Agencies for years, and with the support of Agerpres, in September 2022 BTA became the headquarters of the Association of Balkan News Agencies - Southeast Europe (ABNA - SEE), in which 12 agencies participate. 

"We are also together in the European Newsroom, a platform for cooperation between European news agencies, in which both agencies have participated since its establishment in 2022. We used our cooperation in these international organizations to deepen our cooperation for the sake of more knowledge about each other's day in both countries. We did it with the Director General of Agerpres Claudia Nicolae, who is participating in this conversation today. For more than three years, we have been exchanging one news item with Agerpres every day under a contract that we signed on January 27, 2022," Valchev said.

He also recalled that in 2022, BTA sent its second permanent correspondent to a neighbouring country, as Martina Gancheva took the position in Bucharest. "Let us recall that the correspondent in Bucharest in the period 1984-1991 was the journalist Petyo Petkov, who was one of the few journalists who covered the events on the ground in Romania at the end of 1989, when there were mass protests against the rule of President Nicolae Ceausescu. His information was also quoted by world agencies," Valchev noted.

Valchev pointed out that BTA opened its National Press Club in Bucharest in 2022, thanks to which Romania is also part of the general European conversations that BTA organizes. "The last major event in this press club was the presentation of last October's issue of the LIK magazine, dedicated to the 155th anniversary of the Bulgarian Academy of Science (BAS), as it was in Romania (...) in 1869 that the Bulgarian Literary Society was founded, which later became the BAS", he recalled, adding that the opening of the press club in Bucharest took place on the Day of Saint Theophanes. "This is the monastic name of the Bulgarian Queen Theodora, the first wife of Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria, one of the examples of one of the strongest things in common between Bulgarians and Romanians, namely the common faith," Valchev stressed, adding that a saint from Bulgaria is also the patron saint of Bucharest, namely St. Dimitrii of Basarbovo, after which the Dimitrii of Basarbovo Monastery near Ruse is named.

He emphasized the common historical destiny between the two countries, pointing out the shelter found here by Bulgarian emigrants, who published the emblematic newspapers of the Bulgarian Revival, the trials of the world wars and communism, which cumulated in the 1992 Friendship Treaty and the common entry into the EU and NATO more than a decade later. The 30th anniversary of which we celebrated with a joint photo exhibition from the archives of BTA and Agerpres in Sofia and Bucharest", Valchev recalled.

He said that BTA's Europe on Balkans: Cohesion Skills project aims to talk about the exchange of knowledge between people in Bulgaria and the Balkans and people from the rest of the European Union, so that they can get to know each other's contribution to the common life in the EU. "The EU helps all its members, because as a union it also benefits from each of its members. The point of these conferences is to show the mutual contribution," Valchev concluded.

BTA's Europe on Balkans: Cohesion Skills project aims to raise public awareness and foster open dialogue about cohesion policy, local achievements, and the implementation of the EU's policy priorities. The project kicked off with a conference in Veliki Preslav in November 2024. The schedule of conferences until the end of September 2025 includes events in the following cities: Blagoevgrad, Burgas, Varna, Veliko Tarnovo, Vidin, Vratsa, Gabrovo, Dobrich, Kazanlak, Kardzhali, Kyustendil, Lovech, Montana, Pazardzhik, Pernik, Pleven, Razgrad, Ruse, Samokov, Svishtov, Sliven, Smolyan, Sofia, Stara Zagora, Troyan, Targovishte, Haskovo, Shumen, and Yambol. Cross-border conferences will be held in Belgrade, Bosilegrad, Bucharest, Edirne, Skopje, and Thessaloniki. The project builds on the Europe in the Balkans: A Common Future and Europe in Bulgaria: A Common Future projects, implemented by BTA in 2023 and 2024, respectively.