In the rugged Rhodope mountains in southern Bulgaria, many voters have little hope that Sunday’s parliamentary election, the nation’s fifth in two years, will produce a stable government able to tackle corruption, inflation and poverty.
BULGARIA
Bulgarian prosecutors are launching a terrorism investigation after dozens of schools across the country received hoax bomb threats, local news agency BTA reported on Tuesday.
A recently set up Greek-Bulgarian working group met in Athens last Friday to discuss reviving the Alexandroupoli-Burgas oil pipeline project.
Bulgarian police discovered 43 migrants, including 10 children, hidden in a van in the west of the country, officials said Monday, just days after authorities found the bodies of 18 migrants concealed in a lumber truck.
Bulgaria is scrapping its target to adopt the euro in January 2024 as it fails to meet some criteria, but should seek to join the common currency by 2025 or possibly earlier, Finance Minister Rossitsa Velkova said on Friday.
Two significant agreements between Greece and Bulgaria, which, according to government sources, “further deepen the strategic energy cooperation between the two countries on the basis of solidarity and reciprocity,” were signed on Thursday in Athens by the two countries’ energy ministers.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Thursday spoke of agreements that “change the energy map of Southeast Europe” in joint statements with the President of Bulgaria, Ruben Radev, in Athens after the signing of two memoranda on energy infrastructure with the neighboring country. According to the prime minister, these agreements (which may include the possible construction of an Alexandroupolis-Burgas pipeline) will make the two countries energy providers in the European Union and will contribute to Europe’s energy security.
Bulgarian President Rumen Radev is in Athens on Thursday, where he will be signing agreements aimed at exploring the revival of an oil pipeline project linking Alexandroupoli in northern Greece to Burgas in Bulgaria.
The results of long-term energy diplomacy between Greece and Bulgaria in the field of oil and natural gas will be ratified on Thursday in Athens by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Bulgarian President Rumen Radev with the signing of two bilateral agreements that have been in the works since October.
Bulgaria’s president dissolved the National Assembly on Thursday and called early parliamentary elections for April 2 in hopes of resolving the country’s a bid to settle the country’s prolonged political impasse and biting economic woes.
Bulgaria began construction on Wednesday of a long-delayed natural gas link with neighboring Serbia that will allow flows of non-Russian gas to Belgrade and boost the security of supplies in southeastern Europe.
The interior ministers of North Macedonia and neighboring Bulgaria met Monday to discuss security arrangements ahead of weekend celebrations to honor Gotse Delchev, a 19th-century revolutionary viewed as a hero in both countries.
Bulgaria will hold another parliamentary election – its fifth in two years – after the Socialist Party on Tuesday announced that it had failed to form a government and had returned the unfulfilled mandate to the country’s president.
Bulgartransgaz CEO Vladimir Malinov told reporters that companies from neighboring Greece and North Macedonia have expressed interest in booking capacity at the Chiren gas storage facility, located some 125 km north of Sofia.
The recent announcement of a long-term energy agreement between Turkey and Bulgaria came as a surprise to some and caused consternation in Athens.
Bulgaria is looking to revive a trans-Balkan oil pipeline project to secure non-Russian crude oil supplies for its only oil refinery on the Black Sea, controlled by Russia’s Lukoil, President Rumen Radev said on Tuesday.
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