site.btaMedia Review: January 16

Grain producers ready for protests over the government's failure to deliver on promises of support and defence matters are some of the highlights in the news media on Tuesday. 

AGRICULTURE

In a Bulgarian National Television (BNT) interview, Agrarian Chamber President Kostadin Kostadinov said all political forces had promised farmers funding in the context of Russia's invasion of Ukraine but that State aid was not included in the 2024 State Budget Act. The National Grain Producers Association has asked that grain growers be included in a scheme which is to support all vulnerable agricultural sectors with BGN 442 million. Kostadinov claimed that grain producers cannot survive the competition of cheap Ukrainian grain. The forthcoming liberalization of all Ukrainian imports will affect all countries, he said, citing protests in Germany, Poland, Greece, Lithuania and Romania. Bulgaria's grain producers have set an ultimatum for a meeting with the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Finance Minister, which must be scheduled by Wednesday at the latest. Kostadinov said protests were being staged in reaction to what he called the failed the European Green Deal due to the European Commission's failure to finance the set goals. "We cannot cope with the requirements set to all EU producers and the liberalization of Ukrainian imports," he said.

Interviewed by the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR), Simeon Karakolev from the Bulgarian Agrarian Chamber said that agricultural producers would resort to protests unless the Agriculture Ministry and the government as a whole addressed their demands for legislative amendments. "If they fail to act, we will make them do so. Blockades work best." Referring to protests in the autumn of 2023, he said: "Tractors blocked roads and 80% of our demands were met; if we gather again with our tractors, another 80% of demands will be met."

On Nova TV, Iliya Prodanov, President of the National Grain Producers Association, warned that grain producers may go bankrupt. This sector has not received any support in the last three years, although it has been hit very hard by the war in Ukraine. He said wheat was being purchased at a 15-year low of BGN 350 per tonne, while the price has usually been over BGN 400 per tonne at this time of year, or even BGN 450 per tonne last year.

Capital.bg has a story on farmers' protests across Europe. It says livestock farmers in Bulgaria are also discontent, the immediate cause being an extension of the deadline for payment of subsidies for 2023 until the end of January. The real cause, however, is the difficulties facing them in the last few years.

On Monday, the agriculture ministers of Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia signed a letter on Ukrainian agricultural exports to European Commission Executive Vice President and EU Commissioner for Trade Valdis Dombrovskis and EU Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski. The five countries propose as a possible solution the introduction of tariff quotas for the most sensitive agricultural products.

DEFENCE

Trud frontpages Defence Minister Todor Tagarev's statement on bTV that infrastructure worth EUR 6 billion will be built in Bulgaria in line with NATO's defence plans. He says the project would be built on EU and NATO funding and would include roads, railways, warehouses and pipelines. Bulgaria will also invest in it and the infrastructure will be used for civilian purposes as well. Tagarev says the deployment of a NATO Multinational Battlegroup in Bulgaria has been discussed "dozens or hundreds of times". During his recent visit to the United States, the sides discussed how best to provide the necessary infrastructure in Bulgaria as a host nation and how the US can help this country use international co-financing to build it. There are plans to upgrade the NATO Battlegroup in Bulgaria to a brigade.  The multinational battlegroups in the countries on NATO's eastern flank are to be scaled up from battalions to brigade size - about 5,000 personnel - when required, says Tagarev, adding that there is no clear timetable for now.

In another Trud interview, Bulgaria's first ambassador to NATO, Gen. Sabi Sabev (retd.) says the NATO battlegroup in Bulgaria could become 5,000-strong. The battlegroup includes American troops but is led by Italy, which contributes the largest personnel. If it is to be scaled up to 5,000 troops, it will probably comprise troops from the NATO Member States among Bulgaria's neighbours: Greece, Turkiye, Romania, North Macedonia, Slovakia and Montenegro. The plan is to build the infrastructure near the southeastern town of Yambol, which has good road and rail connections and used to be the location of a rocket artillery brigade of the Third Army. The maintenance of the battlegroup and the infrastructure will be covered by the participating countries, Gen. Sabev says.

Interviewed by BNT, the Chief of Defence, Admiral Emil Eftimov, said the US would deliver eight F-16 Block 70 fighters to this country in 2025. He saw the fighters, which at various stages of completion, in Lockheed Martin's Greenville, South Carolina site during his visit to the US with the Defence Minister earlier in January. If Bulgaria had delayed the acquisition, they would have arrived after 2030 because they are much in demand. The Chief of Defence said that so far, Bulgaria, Romania and Turkiye had destroyed 12 mines in the Black Sea. The governments of the three countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the establishment of a Mine Counter-measures Task Group Black Sea on January 11.

POLITICS

24 Chasa says that in the spirit of GERB leader Boyko Borissov's talk last Friday about GERB and Continue the Change (CC) being a "(non)coalition family", he and CC co-leader Kiril Petkov have finally buried the hatchets and dropped lawsuits against each other. Petkov and Borissov had been suing each other for statements made before the snap elections of 2023 after which CC - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) and GERB-UDF formed an informal government coalition. Petkov was suing Borissov for saying that Petkov's government had bought gas at inflated prices to pocket commission fees. For his part, Borissov was suing Petkov for saying that he "knows very well that in a working judicial system he would have to go to jail". "This was the reasonable thing to do for both of them," Borisov's lawyer Menko Menkov told the daily.

GERB's partner, the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF), will nominate a cabinet member after the rotation if its vision for a government dominated by political representatives is accepted, UDF Chief Secretary Iliya Lazarov said on BNR. He commented that while Kiril Petkov sees eye to eye with the UDF on the need of having politicians in the cabinet, GERB is silent on the matter. Lazarov also commented that the present government was not the best option amid the international crises to the north and south of Bulgaria. He called Tagarev a "bad defence minister". Keeping to the approved political line on the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East does not make him a good minister, the UDF representative said.

ECONOMY

24 Chasa reports that Bulgaria's annual inflation rate fell below 5% for the first time in 2.5 years. The National Statistical Institute reported 4.7% year-on-year inflation in December 2023. The prices of cooking oil and natural gas dropped the most, by 21.1% and 22.8% respectively, compared with December 2022, but they had also appreciated the most in 2022.

ENERGY

Green Policy Institute Executive Director Petko Kovachev commented on BNR on a renewed attempt by CC-DB, GERB-UDF and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms to introduce a bill on wind farm construction in the Black Sea area, which may trigger protests just like an earlier version of the bill. He claimed that the proposal had not been drafted by its sponsors and that it all started as part of an international project which involves an NGO. The people who drafted the bill are not investors, so they cannot make promises, least of all for job creation. This proposal for wind energy in marine spaces ignores other energy technologies, such as solar energy in marine spaces or hydrogen sulphide extraction - something specific to the Black Sea, on which the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences is working successfully, Kovachev said. He argued that there was an interest in building a large international wind park between Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine, adding that this is purely political, rather than purely investor interest. There are many problematic provisions in the proposed bill which should be sorted out, according to the expert.

JUSTICE

bTV asked Justice Minister Atanas Slavov if he would keep his portfolio after Nikolay Denkov of CC-DB and Mariya Gabriel of GERB-UDF rotate as Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister in March. He said he had a clear commitment in the government - to implement the judicial reform - for which he had always received support from them.

SOCIETY

A front-page headline in Trud sums up the findings of a Eurostat survey: "Once Again, Bulgarians Are the EU's Unhappiest People". In 2022, the rating was highest in Austria (7.9), Finland, Poland and Romania (each at 7.7) and lowest in Bulgaria (5.6) on a scale from 0 (very dissatisfied) to 10 (very satisfied). In all countries except Bulgaria, average ratings of life satisfaction were above 6, meaning that most people in the EU declared themselves satisfied rather than dissatisfied. Bulgarians had the lowest life satisfaction in the previous survey as well. Bulgarians 65 and over rated their overall life satisfaction even lower (4.9). Life satisfaction may be influenced by many factors such as age, level of education, family and financial situation, as well as the diversity of experiences, choices, priorities and values of an individual, Eurostat said.

Interviewed by Trud, Chief State Health Inspector Angel Kunchev said that Bulgaria will see a flu epidemic in a matter of days and that the influenza viruses predominate over COVID.