site.btaMedia Review: February 25

OVERALL

All media report on a citizens rally in downtown Sofia which took place on Monday to commemorate three years since the start of the war in Ukraine and to express solidarity with the Ukrainian people. The event, held under the slogan Peace for Europe and the World through Ukraine's Victory! took place amid heightened police presence.

ANTI-EURO PROTESTS IN SOFIA

After anti-euro protests that took place in Sofia on Saturday escalated in vandalizing the building of the European Commission, acting Prosecutor General Borislav Sarafov said during a meeting with the Minister of Interior Daniel Mitov, with the heads of the State Agency for National Security and the National Service for Protection that the prosecution service will hold accountable everyone involved in the vandalism, Mediapool.bg reported. The protestors defaced the building facade with red paint. Ten police officers were also injured. According to eyewitnesses, some of the most "active" protestors were Vazrazhdane members, including MP Ivaylo Tchorbov and mayoral candidate for Oborishte district Petar Ananiev, who were detained but were later released because they have immunity. According to an article published by Sega, the prosecution will request to have them both stripped from their immunity.

Peter Petrov, the Deputy Chairperson of the Vazrazhdane Parliamentary Group, said in an interview for the Bulgarian National Television: "Let us not exaggerate. The police did not exercise violence on the protesters, nor did the protesters on the police. There were no police officers injured, except for some that gassed themselves or were stained with paint"

DEFENCE

Dnevnik.bg reports on the 2025-2029 Governance Programme, which the Council of Ministers adopted during its extraordinary meeting on Monday. The programme specifies that the modernization of the Bulgarian armed forces will continue. Among the measures listed is the construction of a NATO multinational division headquarters in the country; establishing a so-called military Schengen, which would introduce a regulation to synchronize deadlines, procedures and forms of documents with other allies; drafting of the 2027-2032Armed Forces Development Plan; building an effective system for attracting, selecting, motivating, developing and retaining servicepersons. There is also a list of armaments planned to be acquired, among which are Stryker armoured vehicles, multi-purpose modular patrol vessels, 3D radars, HIMARS missile systems.

In the explanatory memorandum to the draft state budget, it is stated that Bulgaria will continue its participation in the decision-making process as well as in the process of building NATO and EU defence capabilities. To this end, funds are provided for the maintenance and development of national defence capabilities and capabilities related to collective defence, which will be invested in the delivery of F-16 Block 70 aircraft, in the acquisition of basic combat equipment for the establishment of battalion battle groups, in the acquisition of ground terminals from the Multifunctional Information Distribution System. The delivery of the aircraft also leads to a one-time increase in the country's capital expenditure by 92% compared to 2024.

ECONOMY

In an interview with the Bulgarian National Radio, Podkrepa Confederation of Labour Vice President Ioanis Parteniotis emphasized that the union does not support the 2025 draft budgets of the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF), Public Social Insurance, and the State. Commenting on Monday’s discussions within the National Council for Tripartite Cooperation, Parteniotis stated that the union did not support the three draft budgets, as their main argument is the insufficient wage increase of only 5% for employees in the NHIF, the National Social Security Institute, and public institutions.

According to Parteniotis, the proposed 5% pension increase is inadequate. However, he acknowledged that a better approach was later adopted, following the Swiss Rule, raising pensions by 8.6% instead of 5%. He noted that to meet eurozone requirements, these additional funds would likely come at the expense of certain capital expenditures.

He also criticized the freeze on maternity and unemployment benefits, which the union opposes. Parteniotis explained that the government’s programme through 2028 explicitly plans for no increases in maternity benefits, parental allowances for adoptive parents and fathers of children up to eight years old, unemployment benefits, and death compensation benefits. He described this as completely unacceptable, adding that the Confederation’s proposal is to fix the second-year maternity benefit, currently BGN 780, to match the minimum wage through amendments to the Social Security Code.

The draft budgets also set a 5% wage increase in the public sector, but Podkrepa argues that for employees earning above the minimum wage, the actual raise would be only some 3.5 to 4%, given the 15.4% increase in the minimum wage. For example, a gross salary of BGN 1,500 would increase by only BGN 40 to 50, which Parteniotis described as unacceptably low. The union is demanding a 15% wage increase in the public sector, requiring an additional BGN 560 million. Podkrepa plans to meet with all parliamentary parties to push for greater responsibility toward workers and the public. However, the union does not rule out protests, if their demands are not met.

ENERGY

In an interview for bTV taken on Tuesday morning, the head of the Bulgarian Petroleum and Gas Association, Svetoslav Benchev, said that the state budget provides for an extended cash receipt to be issued as an invoice at petrol stations. It will be the only cost accounting document and will be issued at the time of refuelling. There will then be no opportunity to go back and request an invoice. Benchev said that having this measure implemented would put a stop to a type of fraud that is currently resulting in an annual loss of some BGN 250 million for the budget.

REAL ESTATE

In an interview for Dnevnik.bg, Aleksandar Bochev, Chair of the National Real Estate Association (NREA), reports of a bill on intermediary services in real estate transactions that the NREA brought before the National Assembly for the third time. The goal of the bill is to regulate the real estate industry and to thwart agents in the grey sector by implementing several measures: introducing a compulsory register where all companies legally operating in the industry must be listed; introducing mandatory training courses for real estate agents who do not already have higher education degrees in economy, law, civil engineering, or architecture; obliging estate agents to sign written agreements that specify whether they work for the buyer or the seller

JUSTICE

Darik News reports that 75-year-old Rumyana Petkova, the mother of European Prosecutor Teodora Georgieva, Bulgaria's representative at the European Public Prosecutor's Office, died in a housefire in the village of Beglezh, North Central Bulgaria, on February 15 shortly after midnight. Days after the tragedy, European Chief Prosecutor Laura Kovesi ordered to have Georgieva guarded, when she is in Bulgaria. Journalist Kiril Borisov told Nova TV that pre-trial proceedings have been initiated for arson and that details on the case are yet to be clarified. He added: "One of the last cases Teodora Georgieva worked on was about a big businessman whose companies supplied motor vehicles to Bulgarian institutions for a lot of money. He was convicted. The trolleybuses for the municipality of Vratsa, which were presented as Polish, turned out to be from Belarus. They were sold at double the price. Another investigation, which the daughter of the dead woman led, was about the repair of the Chiren gas storage facility. Suspicions of misuse of EU funds were present there too."

Borisov also said that colleagues of his found that Georgieva was investigating the National Railway Infrastructure Company for the construction of the railway between Burgas and Plovdiv for alleged misuse of EUR 95 million. "There are four charged in this case. They are former civil servants and managers of large well-known companies that deal mainly with public procurement," he said.

HEALTHCARE

Commenting on the construction of Bulgaria’s future national children's hospital, Blagomir Zdravkov, Executive Director of the Ivan Mitev Children's Hospital, stated that a planning permit has been issued, and the next step is drafting the design brief. Additionally, the advisory team engaged by the European Investment Bank is expected to present its final consolidated report on the necessary capacity and equipment for the hospital.

ENVIRONMENT

Mediapool.bg reports on the 2025 Climate Risk Index released by Germanwatch, according to which Bulgaria was the tenth most affected country by climate change in 2022 with the biggest contributor to this being the number of fatalities caused. The index considers absolute and relative impacts, using six key indicators: economic loss, fatalities, and affected people – each in absolute and relative terms. The list of countries was topped by Pakistan, followed by Belize and Italy.