site.btaMedia Review: March 21

HIGHLIGHTS 

Thursday’s media was dominated by the deadlock in the formation of a cabinet between, until recently, power-sharing partners GERB-UDF and Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB).

Tensions heated up after the Prime Minister-designate of the largest parliamentary group GERB-UDF, Mariya Gabriel, Tuesday handed President Rumen Radev a proposal for a government lineup, outraging CC-DB, who said that the draft cabinet was not agreed upon with them. Later in the day, Continue the Change co-leader Assen Vassilev called Gabriel "the beautiful face of the Mafia" during a CC-DB press conference.

GEBR leader Boyko Borissov demanded an apology as a condition for the continuation of the negotiations. In a bTV interview reproduced by Trud, Vassilev said that "the first cabinet-forming mandate is impossible, and we should be looking forward to the second one". He added that Gabriel cannot and must not be the head of Bulgaria’s government, noting that her move was "unacceptable".

On Nova TV's morning programme on Thursday, GERB-UDF Deputy Floor Leader Denitsa Sacheva said that CC-DB has been trying "to sabotage Mariya Gabriel and the rotation [of prime ministers]". Sacheva was adamant that GERB will not enter negotiations during the second cabinet-forming mandate, which will be handed to the CC-DB as the second largest parliamentary group if the first one proves unsuccessful. "The only option that GERB-UDF will back is a government with Mariya Gabriel as Prime Minister and without Assen Vassilev". Dnevnik and Mediapool also cover this story.

Speaking on bTV's morning programme, GERB-UDF Deputy Floor Leader Raya Nazaryan said that the time for an apology is up and "there are no prerequisites for resuming the negotiations".

24 Chasa leads with an article that sums up the issue: "What Apology? She Must Not Be Prime Minister, He Must Not Be Finance Minister", referring to Gabriel and Vassilev.

24 Chasa carries a front-page article saying that what proved to be the bone of contention that disrupted talks on cabinet formation between CC-DB and GERB-UDF was not who will have control over the regulators, as was previously discussed, but the services (the State Agency for National Security, the intelligence service, and the State Agency for Technical Operations).

Duma leads with an article quoting Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) leader Korneliya Ninova as telling the media in Parliament that "only BSP did not give in to the Mafia". Ninova said that snap elections are the natural end of the assemblage (a word that has become a household name for an informal power-sharing scheme between CC-DB and GERB-UDF). She adds that GERB leader Boyko Borissov is only concerned with his own survival, so he "burns everything around him". She argued that if CC-DB bows down to GERB after what happened on Tuesday, "they will hit the bottom of human dignity and political ethics". "They admit that it is about a fight for the services, the prosecutor general, the judiciary, and not at all for the people, the economy, and Bulgaria".

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Trud leads on an article reporting a 60% increase in Bulgarian high school graduates wishing to pursue higher education abroad compared with 2023. The daily cites data from the World Education Fair, the largest educational forum in Southeast Europe, which has been organized in Bulgaria since 2004. The Netherlands is the most popular study-abroad destination for Bulgarian students, education consultant Nikolay Hristanov tells Trud.  The number of applications to Irish universities has increased twofold, and applications to Swedish universities have gone up by 45%.

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Telegraph’s leading article is about the negative effects of daylight saving time transition. The daily quotes psychiatrist Veselin Gerev as saying that this change may cause significant stress for the body. He adds that daylight time upsets the daily routine of healthy people, who usually need one working week to adapt to the transition. The adaptation is even more difficult for people with mental health problems and those undergoing chronic disease treatment because their medication intake needs to be adjusted to the change.

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Also on its front page, Telegraph reports that Bulgarians arriving from Naples will be the first to enter this country without being subject to passport control. This will take place on March 31, when Bulgarian airports will no longer do passport checks on people departing for or arriving from any of the 27 countries in the Schengen area. The lifting of air and maritime internal border controls with Bulgaria and Romania was announced by the EU Council on December 30, 2023.

POLITICS 

Interview by the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR), sociologist Rumyana Bachvarova, who was also deputy prime minister and interior minister in GERB’s second cabinet, said that the notion that Bulgarian people do not want snap elections to be held is ill-founded. "Voters prove to be wiser than politicians when it comes to making an actual choice," she said. Bachvarova noted that "forming a new government is a matter of political maturity", adding that if negotiations are to continue, they should involve "new faces".

Also on BNR, former GERB's finance minister Vladislav Goranov was adamant that GERB does not want outgoing Finance Minister Assen Vassilev to be part of the government in any shape or form and went on to criticize his financial policies. Goranov allowed for the possibility that negotiations with CC will resume in the coming days, but without Vassilev's participation. 

MIGRANTS

24 Chasa has an extensive interview with ex-deputy interior minister Filip Gunev, who comments on recent incidents involving foreigners. Gunev says that there is no fear of migrants in Bulgaria "because the unintegrated groups are not large", but "we have a problem with racism". Asked whether there is a migrant crisis, he notes that there is a "political crisis that sparks off its own crises". Gunev stresses that there has been a decline of 30% or 40% in migrants arriving in Bulgaria and the whole of Europe in the past couple of months.

JUDICIARY

In a BNR interview, investigative journalist Nikolay Staykov of the Anti-Corruption Fund called for the resignations of acting Prosecutor General Borislav Sarafov and the head of the Sofia City Prosecution Office, Iliana Kirilova. He said that "they are blatantly biased and have no interest in revealing the whole truth" about the cases of the Eight Dwarfs and Martin "the Notary" Bozhanov, an alleged influence trader in the judiciary who was shot dead in Sofia in January. Staykov noted that details and documents are coming to light, which further raises suspicions about how the prosecution service has handled these cases, especially the one involving Petyo "the Euro" Petrov, a former ranking investigator and key figure in the Eight Dwarfs investigation. The investigation is named after a restaurant in Sofia, where Petrov allegedly held meetings and brokered shady deals with the judiciary.

ECONOMY

Trud has a two-page interview with former executive director of the state-owned yogurt and dairy products company, LB Bulgaricum, Vladimir Rusev, who commented on the raised prices of cheese following the change in management. He said that a nearly 60% increase, which the new management justifies with the fact that the company was running at a loss, is "absurd and against the interests of both consumers and the company". Asked why the buying-in price of milk has dropped by nearly 16% in a year, while the price of cheese in stores is higher than this time last year, Rusev said that failure to manage inflation, economic instability, and poor control are pushing market players to hedge their bets with higher markups. Rusev said that the dairy industry in Bulgaria is in dire straits, adding that statistics as of 2024 show that the number of dairy cows is already below 150,000, which is about 11,000 less than a year ago, and the number of farms has dropped by 151. "Businesses are largely sourcing raw materials from other European countries," he noted.

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Telegraph writes about the Podkrepa Labour Confederation’s call for a postponement of the full liberalization of electricity prices for household consumers, planned for July 1, 2024, at least by a year. The call was backed by Ombudsman Diana Kovacheva. The topic is also covered by Trud and Duma.

WORLD HAPPINESS REPORT

Citing findings from the World Happiness Report 2024, released on March 20, Duma reports that Bulgaria is ranked among the least happy European countries, taking the 81st spot. Of the countries in Europe, only North Macedonia (84th), Albania (87th), Turkiye (98th), and Ukraine (105th) come after Bulgaria. The World Happiness Report is a partnership of Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and the WHR’s Editorial Board. 

Trud also cites the report, noting that Bulgaria has dropped from the 77th place it occupied in the ranking in 2023.

CULTURE

Telegraph gives front-page prominence to director Stefan Komandarev’s latest movie, Made in EU, whose cast includes Georgi Peev, a heart and kidney transplantee who climbed the highest peak in Africa, Mt Kilimanjaro's Uhuru Peak, in 2023.

ROAD SAFETY

Citing findings from a Road Safety Institute (RSI) analysis, Trud reports that the risk of car accidents in Sofia is the lowest compared with the rest of the country’s regions in 2023. The risk assessment was conducted among 100,000 people, taking into account the number of registered vehicles and all road traffic accidents. Sofia ranks 10th in terms of road network length after regions such as Ruse, Blagoevgrad, and Plovdiv, RSI said at a forum here on Wednesday organized jointly with Sofia Municipality.

Duma quotes Dimitar Penev of RSI as saying that Bulgaria has the largest number of road deaths per million inhabitants. He cited 2023 data about the EU Member States.

A total of 38,806 serious road accidents were registered in 2018-2023. In these, 49,218 people were injured and 3,319 died, according to Chief Traffic Police Inspector Maria Boteva.