site.btaMedia Review: December 19
![Media Review: December 19](/upload/10166620/1000036254.jpg?l=1000)
![Media Review: December 19](/upload/10166620/1000036254.jpg?l=1000&original=)
OVERVIEW
All print media report that MPs voted down the proposal to get tested for drugs or alcohol before every sitting of parliament. The Bulgarian National Television specifies that the bill was struck down with 61 votes in favour, 62 against and 86 abstentions.
POLITICS
Mediapool writes about the proposed Security Cooperation Agreement with Ukraine that the Council of Ministers approved on October 4, 2024. The agreement represents a political commitment to continued support for Ukraine. After caretaker Bulgarian Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev approached the National Assembly on December 18 for an express mandate to his government to sign the document, he was met with a mostly negative response in Parliament. Mediapool notes: "GERB surprisingly called on the caretaker Prime Minister to withdraw [the Agreement] for the sake of forming a regular government. The document was expected to be signed tomorrow [on December 19] during the European Council in Brussels, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will also be present, but this apparently will not happen. Thus, Bulgaria joins the team of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is one of the few European leaders with pro-Russian positions."
The article suggests that GERB chose to back out from signing the Agreement in an attempt to form a Cabinet with BSP - United Left. Mediapool quotes European Council on Foreign Relations Deputy Director Vessela Tcherneva who commented on Facebook: "Today's shenanigans with sending [the Agreement] to the National Assembly [for approval], given that there was an agreed signing with President Zelenskyy scheduled for tomorrow [December 19] in Brussels is shameful. This leaves Bulgaria, along with Hungary, a NATO country without such an agreement. [...] GERB's refusal to support the signing is strange to say the least and is a great gift to Orban."
Nova TV quotes Movement for Rights and Freedoms - New Beginning Floor Leader Delyan Peevski, who told reporters on Thursday morning anyone who does not approve the agreement with Ukraine is a "servant of Moscow". Peevski said: "It is time to see how big the Moscow coalition is. This cooperation has been a long time in the making. it does not matter whether a caretaker or a regular government approves it. The topic today is Bulgaria's Euro-Atlantic path. We are obliged to defend it. I expect action. If [Parliament Chair Nataliya] Kiselova does not bring it forward, then she is a servant of Moscow. I want to see what Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria [CC-DB] and the rest of the parties do."
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Political expert Evgenii Dainov commented on the request submitted to Parliament by acting Prosecutor General Borislav Sarafov to have six MPs stripped of their immunity: MECh' Radostin Vasilev, Veselin Veshev and Angel Georgiev from Vazrazhdane, Lena Borislava from CC-DB, Gyunay Daloolu from the Movement for Rights and Freedoms - New Beginning and Mario Rangelov from the Alliance for Rights and Freedoms. Dainov said: "The time of men pretending to be strong has come in world politics. In my opinion, Sarafov is pretending to be strong to show that he should occupy the position of prosecutor general. Some of these people are clearly being targeted for show, to distract from the main immunities that he actually wants [stripped]."
ECONOMY
Trud's front page is dedicated to a piece of legislation tabled by caretaker Minister of Finance Lyudmila Petkova as part of the 2025 State Budget bill that would have representatives of the National Revenue Agency (NRA) being allowed to carry arms as part of their job. The reasoning behind the proposed amendment is that there are cases of NRA inspectors facing lack of cooperation and/or aggression when trying to conduct tax audits, while the inspectors have to act fast to prevent the hiding of evidence. Another proposed amendment is to allow the NRA to sell confiscated cryptocurrencies.
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In an op-ed for Trud, economist Prof. Boyan Durankev writes that central heating in Sofia should be banned over the summer to avoid spiralling into debt. The article proceeds to quote data from the International Monetary Fund from October 2024, according to which Bulgaria ranks 166th out of 186 countries in terms of debt-to-GDP ratio, with one of the lowest ratios of 23.7%. The only EU Member State with a lower ratio is Estonia with 21.8%, while on the other end of the list are Greece with 159%, Italy with 136.9%, France with 112.3%, Belgium with 105% and Spain with 102.3%. The article notes that those countries at one point have declared that they would not go higher than 60%, being members of the EU and/or the euro area. According to Durankev, while those countries benefit from violating their declarations, a likely consequence is that everyone is harmed in the process, whether directly or indirectly, for example, by inflation that goes above 2%. The author believes that while Bulgaria's 23.7% ratio, equivalent to debt of USD 25.7 billion, is 2.5 times higher than the levels from the 1990s, the country should feel calm gravitating around 25% within the next 3 years. The text concludes: "A debt as high as 30% can also be incurred by 2030, if the funds are tied to the following frameworks: 1. Full absorption of EU funds (a basic precondition); 2. The funds are directed to productive investments in the real economy and in the public sector and are not distributed on a crony basis; 3. The corruption tap, which over the last 35 years has ranged between 20 and 30% of budget funds and is absorbed from the bottom (municipalities) to the top, is completely turned off; 4. Central heating in Sofia over the summer gets banned."
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An article by Evgeni Gavrilov in Duma cites data from Eurostat, according to which Bulgaria and Hungary trail behind all other EU Member States in terms of actual individual consumption. Gavrilov states that this is to be expected in countries "in permanent political crisis and embroiled in corruption".
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In a spread interview for 24 Chasa, writer and producer Rosen Petrov warns that while Bulgarians can bear a great deal, they are prone to spontaneous outbursts on a huge scale, especially if someone reaches into their pockets. He added that a couple of stiffer electricity bills could see the situation get out of hand. Petrov said: "You see what is happening to the European economy. It will inevitably affect us." Asked to comment on the ongoing political dead end that Bulgaria is experiencing, Petrov said: "There have been many dead ends in our history: in 1923, 1934 and 1944. Parties were pretending to be partisans, until the forester came with a rifle, and the games of freedom and democracy ended."
TRAFFIC
Telegraph's front page reports that many hitchhikers are expected to appear around the holidays, as seats on buses and trains connecting Sofia to the country's largest cities have been mostly sold out. Some of the largest bus operators are planning to run more courses to try and meet demand.
ENVIRONMENT
An article in Duma reports that Sofia municipal councillors Enyo Savov and Ivan Peshev demanded a guarantee from Sofia Mayor Vassil Terziev that the number of districts in the capital, whose waste management is run by private companies owned by "businessmen with nicknames," will drop by a third in 2025. Peshev added that he has been made aware that the head of Sofia's Waste Treatment Plant has not filed a report with the Ministry of Environment and Water since April 2024, even though they must file such a report on a monthly basis.
SOFIA-SKOPJE RELATIONS
An op-ed by Rumina Dimitrova published by Duma alleges that politicians in Bulgaria have a poor memory, which makes them look less convincing in their positions towards Skopje, while their counterparts in the Republic of North Macedonia lack reading comprehension, or at least, that is the way it suits them. Dimitrova writes:
"In 2022, there were terrible political scandals in our country about the so-called French proposal, which Kiril Petkov's cabinet signed. It was even cited as a reason for {There Is Such a People leader] Slavi Trifonov to dissolve the government. To date, however, this very document will prove to be one of our most cunning moves in diplomacy and a powerful weapon in defending the Bulgarian interest. If only someone remembered what it said. Everyone is focused on the fact that the Bulgarians should be included in the Constitution [of North Macedonia]. [...] The condition is a thorn in the side of the VMRO-DPMNE government, which has already thwarted the Bulgarians' inclusion once, when the current opposition party of SDSM was in charge. And to date, VMRO-DPMNE is trying to negotiate with the other EU Member States to have this condition to be suspended – first [the EU] admits [North Macedonia], and then [North Macedonia] includes the Bulgarians [into the Constitution]. [VMRO-DPMNE] assures their compatriots that this idea is meeting more and more support in Brussels and, you see, it is about to be implemented. And that Bulgarian diplomacy is weak because the country jumps from election to election.
"The truth, however, is that Brussels is far from being understanding about Skopje's idea. Not only because the bureaucrats there in general do not look with a good eye at a state not fulfilling its commitments, but also because along with Bulgarians in the Constitution, {North Macedonia] has to include Croats, Montenegrins, Slovenians, Jews and Egyptians (as during the last census, some of the Roma in the country were identified as such). That is, Brussels has not only the Bulgarian interest to protect, but also the interest of five other nationalities."
According to Dimitrova, even if all stakeholders came to an agreement to ignore this requirement, Skopje still would not start membership negotiations because of the content of the French proposal. The document stipulates that Bulgaria will consent to have North Macedonia hold its first intergovernmental conference, to give a real start to its membership negotiations, as soon as Bulgarians are recognized as an ethnic minority by the Constitution. Another condition specified in the Proposal is to have the files of the Yugoslav Directorate for State Security declassified.
/NZ/
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