site.btaMedia Review: May 16

All media on Thursday report on the assassination attempt against Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico.

JUNE 9 SNAP PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS

The Bulgarian National Television's (BNT) morning programme hosted a discussion on Bulgaria's two-in-one elections in June with guests Stefan Manov, deputy Chairman of the Public Council at the Central Election Commission, Tihomir Bezlov, expert from the Centre for the Study of Democracy, and Kalin Slavov, Executive Director of Transparency International Bulgaria.

Manov said that there are no difficulties related to the organization of elections abroad. He noted that the number of voting applications submitted is "insignificant". "I do not think that turnout will be high, as people are tired of voting all the time," Manov said. According to him, what could raise the voter turnout is the full-fledged activation of a constituency outside the country. "It exists in the Election Code, but there is no methodology to determine the number of seats outside the country," he added.

Bezlov said: "The at-risk polling stations, which are around 1,100 against 12,000, have had less weight in terms of votes in the last 3-4 years compared to a decade ago. The reason is trivial - emigration."

Manov identified tally sheets as one of the main problems of Bulgaria's electoral practice. Slavov stressed that "machines work like printers - they print ballots". Slavov said: "From then on, the counting is again manual and is done by the section election commissions. I remind you that about ten years ago there was a legislative decision in force to make counting centres where the ballots would be counted by the section election commissions." According to him, such a practice would reduce vote buying.

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Commenting on yet another round of parliamentary elections, the sixth round since April 2021, Petar Kichashki wrote in an op-ed for Trud News that while some may see the upcoming elections as a bad thing, he does not share this sentiment. The article reads: "We can say something straightforward about the start of the campaign: we see nothing new, nothing unexpected. We are used to elections, so the parties cannot shock us with anything. Some see [the election] process as a bad thing. I disagree - elections are always a good thing. Yes, too many elections are a sign of instability. But what is democracy if not an attempt to temporarily govern the perpetually ungovernable? People will never be of the same mind."

Kichashki believes that the only political entities that are "stable in the campaign" are GERB-UDF and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, as they seem to have gained the most from the assemblage, particularly from its disintegration and the clumsy way that its third member, Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria, left it.

Kichashki concludes people should be glad that there is an election, because "If there weren't, it would be far worse."

ECONOMY

Former Finance Minister Simeon Dyankov said on BNT's morning programme that Bulgaria could join the euro area in 2026 at the earliest. "We are not ready, first we do not meet the inflation criteria. [...] At the moment Bulgaria is on a very unpleasant list of countries where money is laundered, so there are not only legal changes that need to be implemented, but also the whole infrastructure and the institutions that have to deal with this are not working well in Bulgaria at the moment," Dyankov noted. The share of Bulgarians in favour of joining the eurozone is questionable - just over 50%, he said. He added that citizens and businesses are yet to learn what will happen once Bulgaria adopts the euro as its currency.

In a Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) interview, economist Georgi Vuldzhev of the Expert Club for Economics and Politics said that in 2024, Bulgaria is very likely to meet the target inflation rate of 3% or even go below it. According to the expert, Bulgaria is unlikely to meet the eurozone criteria next month, when the European Commission's (EC) convergence report should be published. The convergence criteria include price stability, sound public finances, exchange rate stability and convergence in long-term interest rates. Vuldzhev predicts that the EC will recommend having Bulgaria's eurozone accession postponed. He believes that a more realistic deadline for Bulgaria's eurozone accession is 2026. When the legislation on the introduction of the euro gets adopted is also important, the economist highlighted, adding that this will be determined by the political situation in Parliament.

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The Mediapool.bg online outlet published an analysis titled Housing prices pump up support for populists in Europe. The article reports that rents and housing prices in Europe's big cities are becoming increasingly unaffordable, especially for young people. High costs are creating acute housing inequality, which puts an entire generation at risk of being left out of the market. Young people have been protesting against unaffordable housing in Czechia, Ireland, Portugal and Germany. Their discontent is being exploited by far-right and populist parties ahead of the European Parliament elections on June 6-9, 2024, Mediapool.bg writes. Polling agencies forecast that far-right parties will win the European elections in nine EU Member States. In nine other states they will become second or third political force. Bulgaria ranks in the second group of countries with its pro-Russian Vazrazhdane party. Like immigration, housing prices could become a strong driver of support for far-right and populist parties, analysts warn.

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An article in Trud reports on data from the National Statistical Institute, according to which while the price of wheat has dropped by 30.4% in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the same period last year, the price of bread in stores has seen nearly no change. On the other hand, a 20.6% drop in the price of sunflower seeds has seen a significant decrease in the price of cooking oil. Milk, dairy products and eggs were 2.7% cheaper in April 2024 compared to the same month last year. In the first quarter of the year, compared to the same period last year, prices of live animals increased by 3.9%, with prices of cattle being 4% higher and price of broilers being 8.4% higher. This was observed against a backdrop of feed prices falling 8.1% year-on-year.

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Telegraph's frontpage is dedicated to restaurants and other similar establishments reducing the sizes of their meal portions while keeping the prices high. Some venues have chosen to stop offering beef steak altogether, as customers find them to be unaffordable.

EDUCATION

Commenting on the issue with the salaries of the administrative staff of Bulgaria's higher education institutions on bTV's morning talk show, caretaker Education Minister Galin Tsokov said that the first step towards solving the problem has been taken following Wednesday's meeting with caretaker Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev. At a news briefing on Wednesday, Glavchev said that the salaries will be increased by 12%. Earlier in the day, the Cabinet announced that it will provide BGN 39 million in additional funding to increase the salaries of academic staff in state-run higher education institutions as of January 1, 2024. "What happened yesterday [on Wednesday] during the discussion on the allocation of those BGN 39 million meant for universities, is an amendment to the Higher Education Act that actually obliged us to make a new money allocation needed for salary increases. The Act fixed assistant professors' salaries at 125% of last year's average gross salary," Tsokov said. He added: "The Finance Minister [Lyudmila Petkova] told me and the trade unions last week that there are no resources in the [state budget] to cover the BGN 168 million needed for the increase. And then we set out to [take] at least the first step towards solving the problem," Tsokov reported.

Chair of the Council of Rectors Prof. Dr Miglena Temelkova told Telegraph that some BGN 140 million is needed by the end of the year for state universities in order to raise educators' salaries in accordance with the Higher Education Act. Universities are threatening to shut down on Monday to as a form of protest demanding the promised salary raises.

HEALTH

An article in Telegraph quotes data from the National Center of Infectious and Parasitic Diseases, which warns that there has been a boom in chickenpox cases among children across the country, with more than 1,000 confirmed cases in the past week alone. Some 15,200 children have been infected since the start of the year. Prof. Todor Kantardzhiev told the daily that one way to avoid this was to introduce free and voluntary vaccines covered by the state three or four years ago, as the price of the vaccine today is significant.

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Trud's frontpage warns that high levels of salt in bread sold in Bulgarian markets can contribute to high blood pressure, which is a main cause of strokes. The article reports that every month some 4,000 people in the country suffer from a stroke, which can be linked to the high levels of salt consumption. The Ministry of Health said that cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases accounted for 59.8% of all deaths in the country in 2023. The Association for Stroke and Aphasia is pushing for reducing the amounts of salt in bread and pasta sold in stores, as well as for a change in the standards for the permissible amount of salt in foods in general. Deputy Chair of the Association, Dr Georgi Georgiev, told the daily: "A lot of bread is consumed in Portugal, similarly to our country. After the amount of salt was reduced there, they saw a 50% drop in the number of people suffering from hypertension."

In January 2019, Portugal introduced mandatory maximum salt levels in bread. Today 100g of Portuguese bread contains 1 gramme of salt. Bulgarian bakers have a common practice of not specifying the salt content in their pastries, however, experts suggest that there are 1.5 grammes of salt in 100 grammes of bread here.

ROAD TRAFFIC

In a BNR interview, Bogdan Milchev, head of the Road Safety Institute, cited data according to which there were fewer 40 people killed in road accidents since the beginning of 2024, compared to the same period of 2023, which is a drop of approximately 27%. Milchev scolded the media outlets for failing to report on this data. In his words, the most serious problem is the extremely unstable transport system in Bulgaria. "Yes, there are some steep drops [in numbers of casualties], but then we are back to square one," he argued, adding that the people who are managing the transport system are not doing so right. "People always make mistakes. The idea is to manage the risk of those mistakes, so that we do not perish. The question is how to prioritize the risk, to identify [its] root causes," he said. According to Milchev, Traffic Police should focus on placing more stationary speed cameras in order to achieve calmer traffic. Milchev then criticized Traffic Police for acting like a private company, as it uses its mobile speed cameras as tools to collect money from fines. He claimed that the Interior Ministry does not spend appropriately the money collected from fines imposed. He stated that this money is not used to improve road safety, as it should, but the Interior Ministry uses it to fill its budget gaps instead.