site.btaMedia Review: July 29

THIRD GOVERNMENT-FORMING MANDATE

Speaking on the morning programme of the Bulgarian National Television, Bulgarian Socialist Party deputy chairman Kristian Vigenin will accept an invitation by There Is Such a People (TISP) for talks on the third cabinet-forming mandate. “We are simply trying to close the divisions that led us to a result of 7% in the last elections. As for the mandate, we have always thought in two ways - if it is handed to us and if it is not. But overall our approach is the same," he explained the relations between the party and President Rumen Radev.

"We can find one of the reasons why the mandate was handed to TISP in the legal dispute between Korneliya Ninova and the BSP National Council about exactly who represents the party. I guess the President takes this into account, because there is a risk in these days when we have to decide the fate of a possible future government, there may be some uncertainties. The third mandate, it is not of one political formation or another, we see it as a mandate of Parliament, one last chance for this Parliament to be able to form a government", said Vigenin.

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Referring to sources from the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), TrudNews reports that former BSP leader Korneliya Ninova is keeping as hostage the party and the coalition, because she is the only one who can sign documents. Days ago she withdrew the power of attorney from the party’s lawyer.

The court has not yet registered Atanas Zafirov as an interim leader. At the end of last week a hired law firm submitted a motion to the Sofia City Court for his registration. According to experts, the court will not allow a preliminary execution and it may take the court months to come up with a ruling. This means that it is possible for Ninova to register the candidate lists for the upcoming elections with the Central Election Commission. The party said that it is not clear what the parties in the wider socialist coalition will demand.

WILDFIRES

Speaking on Bulgarian National Radio about the BG Alert early warning system, Rumen Stoyanov, executive director of the Association of Mayors of Mayoralties, said: "In places there is no coverage and people cannot be warned. We have written letters to all the committees, to the ministers of Interior and Defence, to the State Agency for National Security, and parliamentary committees and there are no decisions. What we said then is happening now."

“All the signals submitted to the institutions included the settlements where in a power outage, the mobile operators have no coverage,” he specified.

"The state should oblige mobile operators even to provide coverage when electricity is cut," said Stoyanov in the aftermath of the recent disastrous wildfires and the inability to warn the population in some of the affected areas.

Regarding the activation of the BG Alert early warning system, he believes that there should be very serious communication between local and state authorities and the decision should be joint.

More manpower with equipment is needed, Stoyanov said in connection with the neglected areas in the smaller settlements, which become very vulnerable in case of fire.

"None of the mayors have shirked from the responsibility, but you need manpower, machinery, fuel."

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Dnevnik.bg carries an interview with Raycho Raychev, CEO of EnduroSat, who says that Bulgaria may have a satellite system for wildfire prevention in about two-three years and at the cost of EUR 60 million. Two years ago, his company floated the idea for cooperation with the government.

Raychev says that to this day, nothing has been done at state level to make this project actually happen. On top of that, such a programme can be financed by external sources such as the European Commission, European banks, partnerships with European countries, and will have a negligible effect on the national budget.

The Balkan Sentinel would cost around BGN 60 million. This includes the launch and operations of 30 satellites for a minimum of five to seven years of operational life and all the costs of building the entire ground segment, including the space data processing team, the early fire warning applications, infrastructure monitoring and water and nature monitoring, border surveillance. The system will save hundreds of millions of leva in losses per year and provide services to all ministries, including for defence purposes.

This system can generate resources for the budget by being offered as a service to European partners. Hundreds of Bulgarian engineers, technologists and researchers will be involved in the process of creating this space infrastructure and Bulgaria will finally have its own sovereign space system to contribute to the EC and NATO programmes.

In terms of implementation time, no more than two to three years are needed, after which our country will have one of the most advanced and largest Earth observation systems and a real initial step in creating an economic space sector.

DISCLOSURE OF COUNTER-CORRUPTION DECISIONS 

On Bulgarian National Radio, Lora Georgieva, an expert with the Anti-Corruption Fund, said that the non-governmental organization wants the court to fine the members of the counter-corruption commission for their refusal to comply with a court ruling. She also said that the public is kept in the dark about the activities of the commission.

The administrative court has ruled clearly that if the decisions contain personal data, the commission may delete it, she said in connection with one of the objections of the commission.

It allows for random interpretation. In the face of similar facts and data, different decisions are made about which assets are to be confiscated and which not. The court usually rules in favour of the person whose assets are seized, said Georgieva.

She said that in 2023 the Commission was granted BGN 12 million in claims, while it had seized assets worth billions.

In July the Supreme Administrative Court rejected an appeal by the Commission for Forfeiture of Illegally Acquired Assets (CFIAA) in a case initiated and won by the Anti-Corruption Fund (ACF) back in 2022. 

This brings to an end a two-year period in which CFIAA resorted to a series of procedural tricks to avoid complying with the court ruling obliging it to disclose information to the ACF. The SAC ruling leaves no further procedural steps for CFIAA to take.

In April 2022, the Fund filed a lawsuit after the commission refused to provide access to its decisions to initiate proceedings for confiscation of illegally acquired property. During the lawsuit, it became clear that the commission, in violation of the law, had declared all its decisions to initiate forfeiture proceedings confidential.

EDUCATION

Sega.bg writes that Bulgaria is among the countries in Europe with the highest share of graduates who work on a permanent employment contract. Those jobless among graduates of bachelor's or master's degree in Bulgarian universities are less than 5%. This is shown by the results of a large-scale European study EUROGRADUATE 2022 on the realization of graduates through the GRADE project, in which the Education Ministry participates.

The poll has been carried out in 17 European countries – Austria, Bulgaria, Germany Greece, Estonia, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Malta, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Croatia, and Czechia. The study focused on graduated in the years in 2016/2017 and 2020/2021. Some 3,606 graduates were interviewed online.

The bachelors and masters who participated in the survey in Bulgaria are generally satisfied with their studies. The average satisfaction among Bulgarian graduates is about 3.8 on a scale from 1 to 5, which is defined as high satisfaction with the training. It coincides with the average for the surveyed countries.

The share of workers among graduates of both bachelor's and master's degrees in Bulgaria is high - between 84% and 88% for the different groups represented in the survey, which means good realization in terms of finding a job. These shares are also close to the average for the surveyed European countries.

According to the latest data from 2023 from the rating system, the share of hired graduates who work in a position that requires higher education in the first 5 years after graduation increases to over 59%, compared to 54% last year, for which a higher education diploma is required.