Faced with European Commission concerns and investor worries about endemic organised crime in Bulgaria, new Prime Minister Boiko Borissov has sent clear signals about his determination to rid the country of serious crime – while being cautious about promising immediate results.
 
Through a succession of official ceremonies in Parliament and at the Cabinet office, and in media interviews, when his Cabinet took office on July 27 2009, Borissov spelled out that one of his administration’s top priorities would be fighting organised crime and corruption.
 
He said that the structures charged with combating organised crime, theft of European Union funds and corruption should start working, because if they did not, he would "take matters in my own hands".
 
Less than a week before Borissov’s Cabinet was sworn in, the latest European Commission report on Bulgaria’s progress in fighting organised crime and corruption was released.
 
The report said Bulgaria had achieved progress in the judiciary, fighting corruption and organised crime, but lacked political will and a strategy, and change had been slow in coming.
 
This is, of course, criticism that is relevant to the now-defunct Bulgarian Socialist Party-led ruling coalition that vacated office to make way for the incoming Borissov administration.
 
The report contained 21 recommendations and demands that Bulgaria take concrete actions to fight corruption and organised crime.
 
On July 27, Borissov said: "We will govern openly, fighting corruption, working hard and persistently until we achieve concrete results".
 
Linked to Borissov’s stated determination of fighting crime is his priority of restoring European partners’ trust in Bulgaria.
 
However, he has also warned that "results will not come immediately".
 
In an interview with daily Standart, Borissov said that he wanted to see results in the next six months.
 
"There are murders and robberies everyday. Kidnappings are the latest plague, we are receiving awful reports about the traffic of synthetic drugs. Unyielding political will must be sensed in all these," the newspaper quoted Borissov as saying.
 
He said that the State Agency for National Security (SANS) should come up with analysis and information and work closely with the Prosecutor-General’s office.
 
It was not the job of SANS to make arrests and he would prefer to see the agency working discreetly, passing on reports to prosecutors, "and in turn these (supervising) prosecutors should be able to go and take several policemen or task officers and handcuff the culprits".  
 
"Police and the National Service for Combating Organised Crime deal with drug trafficking, smuggling of stolen cars. If any of the directors of these services has entered into some kind of illegal relations with organised crime, it is SANS' responsibility to catch these connections," Borissov said.