site.btaMedia Review: April 3

POLITICS

The first vote of no confidence in Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov's government will be held today, April 3, at 1:45 PM, Trud says in its main story. The vote is doomed to fail because the motion is sponsored by just 54 MPs of the parliamentary groups of Vazrazhdane, MECh and Velichie in the 240-seat National Assembly, the daily says, quoting political analysts. A no-confidence motion must be supported by more than half of all MPs in order to pass. Observers say the fact that the vote was proposed over "the persistent failure of the Cabinet's foreign policy" clearly shows which parliamentary parties are the real opposition and which ones are with the incumbents. In contrast to Vice President Iliana Iotova's comment that foreign policy was an unlikely theme for the vote, political scientist Tatyana Burudzhieva tells the daily that the theme is understandable, given the policies and the alternatives which Vazrazhdane is trying to push through in a volatile foreign-policy situation. Burudzhieva notes that the Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria parliamentary group, who walked out of the debate and intend to stay out of the vote, could have benefited from the procedure by showing that they can advance policies.

The topic features prominently in other media as well. According to 24 Chasa, the no-confidence vote comes before the government's 100th day, but the cabinet will certainly survive at least another 100 days until a convergence report about Bulgaria's preparedness for euro area membership is published in late June.

A SegaBG.com analysis says that "the leaning tower of the government" is apparently propped by Delyan Peevski, leader of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) – New Beginning. According to the author, Peevski seems to have no problem alternating between supporting the incumbents and the opposition when it suits him. "The other MRF" (the faction of Ahmed Dogan) is in the same position, albeit pressed by circumstances – now desperately trying to cling to the powerholders to wring something out of them, now angered by them when gaining nothing. The other parliamentary forces have neither power nor a reasonable plan to challenge the government. With this kind of opposition, the cabinet, hinging on the New Beginning, can stay on for 100 years, the author concludes.

Speaking on the morning talk show of BNT1, the main channel of Bulgarian National Television, political scientist Georgi Kiryakov said the no-confidence motion is not targeted at this particular government but at "certain publics outside Parliament." Kiryakov commented: "For many years, the main problem with no-confidence votes has been that they are not part of parliamentary democracy, not part of Parliament's life. They are part of public life. That is to say, they are an election campaign instrument."

On Nova TV, Hassan Ademov MP (Democracy, Rights and Freedoms – MRF) refuted speculation that some members of the group may support the government just to avoid losing their immunity and facing criminal prosecution. Ademov said the group would not let parliamentary immunity be used as a bargaining chip for keeping a share in power.

* * *

MPs of the There Is Such a People (TISP) parliamentary group propose amendments to the Higher Education Act to allow the closure of institutions of higher learning by order of the Council of Ministers if no studies are held there for a long time, SegaBG.com reports. Under the effective law, a university may be closed by the National Assembly if it breaks the rules, or if it receives two successive refusals to be accredited (or has not applied for accreditation), or the founders of a private university apply for closure, or the Council of Ministers proposes a closure. TISP argues that a higher education establishment which continuously fails to hold studies damages the reputation of all such institutions and wastes public or private resources.

LAW & ORDER

In 2024, the courts ordered the confiscation of BGN 3.37 million in illegally acquired assets in cases investigated by the Criminal Assets Forfeiture Commission (CAFC), whose budget of BGN 15 million exceeded the confiscations by far, 24 Chasa says in its main story, covering CAFC's annual report. The report has been submitted to the National Assembly, and the MPs are expected to take a vote on it in a matter of hours. The assets confiscated in 2024 were one-third of the amount in 2023 (BGN 9.65 million), the paper says, quoting the previous annual report. The legal cases lost by the commission in 2023 were worth 10 times more than the cases won. No such data is available for 2024.

* * *

Turkish doctors, and people posing as such, have carried out unlawful medical checkups and consultation sessions in hotel rooms in Bulgaria, Plovdiv Regional Health Inspectorate Director Argir Argirov said, as quoted in Trud. These doctors run online advertisements of their services, aiming to encourage potential patients from Bulgaria to seek treatment in Turkiye. They tell the intended patients that medical treatment in Turkiye is far cheaper than here.

ROADS

Regional Development and Public Works Minister Ivan Ivanov suspended the entire leadership of the Regional Road Administration in Pleven, North Central Bulgaria over a spate of traffic accidents which occurred near the village of Telish in recent days, Duma reports on page one. Ivanov asked the Road Infrastructure Agency (RIA) to conduct a comprehensive check within seven days. The move follows the death of a 12-year-old girl a day after she was injured in a traffic accident. It was one of a series of accidents on the same road which have claimed three lives this year. The daily quotes the Interior Ministry as saying that they have repeatedly alerted RIA, but to no avail. For their part, RIA claimed that the road is in good condition, without any potholes or surface flaws. People in Pleven Region plan protests over what they see as poor condition of the road between Telish and Radomirtsi, which is part of the Sofia-Ruse highway. They demand immediate safety measures, speed limit signs and enhanced traffic control, Duma says.

According to bTV, a protest is planned for April 12, when the Sofia-Ruse highway will be blocked.

The 24 Chasa daily sums up in a text box: "A child killed by a long-haul truck wakes the government. Still arguing whether the road is bad, the authorities put a speed limit." The paper has interviewed Nikolai Popov, the father of the young victim Siana. He calls for an investigation into the warnings filed so far about this road, arguing that if it is proven that the alerts were not processed in due manner and no measures were taken, this is a case of criminal negligence.

Interviewed for the morning talk show of BNT1, Vladimir Todorov of the Bulgarian Association of Victims in Car Accidents says that 25 to 30 kids lose their lives in traffic accidents in Bulgaria every year. "A classroom is emptied," he said figuratively. "Sadly, the situation does not change through the years." Todorov speculated that the infrastructure was probably the factor which caused young Siana's death. He went on to say: "There are between 36 and 40 critical road sections in Bulgaria. The Traffic Police know about them, the municipal governments know about them, we all know about them. At some of these spots there are special signs warning that this is a critical section. In other spots there are no such signs. But we never set aside funding and never say, for instance, we are going to take care of three or four of them this year."

ECONOMY

A retired KGB-groomed intelligence officer is joining the Board of Directors of Avtomagistrali, a state-owned company which gained notoriety for signing in-house contracts for the construction of the Hemus Motorway (in the north of Bulgaria) under the third government of prime minister Boyko Borissov (2017-2021), MediaPool.bg says, citing data from the Company Register. Kamen Manev, 68, served with the foreign intelligence department of the former State Security, the political police in communist Bulgaria. In August 1989, he went to the then Soviet Union for a five-month intelligence training course at the KGB. He has served as executive director of the Sofiiski Imoti real estate company (2009-2012) and on the management of the Sofiiska Voda water company (2008-2012), both of them in the capital. From May 2024 until April 1, 2025, the former intelligence officer was a member of the Supervisory Board of the Bulgarian Water and Sewerage Holding.

The decision on Manev's appointment to the Management Board of Avtomagistrali dates from March 26, 2025. The next day, an in-house contract was entered in the Public Procurement Register, under which the Road Infrastructure Agency entrusts Avtomagistrali to maintain road surface markings in three of Bulgaria's six planning regions. The 18-month contract is worth BGN 59 million, which the website describes as a relatively large amount of money.

* * *

The Bulgarian canning industry is having its first official holiday today, April 3, MediaPool.bg says. A celebration is planned at the University of Food Technologies in Plovdiv. The industry was born in the seaside city of Varna in 1899. It has gone a long way since then, from supplying products to The Ritz in London to exporting hundreds of millions of tonnes of canned food to Russia during the communist era, to selling gourmet delicacies to Japan and Israel nowadays, Antoaneta Bozhinova, Executive Director of the Union of Processors of Fruit and Vegetables, told the website.