Bulgaria’s European Affairs Minister Gergana Grancharova said that the country had made a good debut in the first year of its membership of the European Union.
She was speaking on November 6 at an event hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce in Bulgaria, in Sofia’s Radisson SAS Grand Hotel, on the theme of Bulgaria’s first year of EU accession.

Grancharova listed the success stories since January 2007 as including the release from Libya of the Bulgaria medics, an achievement in which EU and United States support had played key roles, and the “promotion of Cyrillic script in the European context”.

This is a reference to Bulgaria’s campaign to have its name and spelling of the European single currency officially recognised as including the Bulgarian “evro”.

The spring summit of the EU had shown that in debate on issues such as global warming, biofuels and other energy issues, Bulgaria was a team player in dealing with European community problems.

Grancharova said that in the past five years, Bulgaria’s credit rating had been upgraded eight times. The business climate had improved gradually, unemployment and public debt were decreasing, and Bulgaria was a frontrunner in the inflow of foreign direct investment.

Seven European programmes would see Bulgaria get 11 billion euro in assistance over the next seven years and Grancharova said that she expected further good news from the European Commission by the end of this month regarding other operational programmes.

Challenges continuing to face Bulgaria included that the country’s administrative capacity left “much to be desired”, the public sector – notably health care and education – was “not entirely reformed” and the country lacked a sufficiently flexible medium for co-ordination with business.

Another major achievement in the first year, she said, was that farms subsidies to Bulgaria from the EU had not been reduced.

On the safeguard clause imposed on Bulgaria’s aviation sector, Grancharova said that she believed that there would soon be “good news” about whether this would continue.

She said that a substantial effort was needed to prepare Bulgaria to join the eurozone.

Grancharova confirmed that Bulgaria had sent an official letter about joining the Schengen visa area in 2011, and expected “expert inspections” on the country’s preparedness to begin in early 2008.

On organised crime and corruption, she said that the need for reform to combat these problems had become a concern for all of Bulgarian society, and she was grateful for this.

“Bulgaria had its difficult moments in its preparations for membership of the EU. It was not an easy thing to be a candidate country. It is even more difficult to be a member state,” she said, noting that this was in part because the EU itself faced reform challenges.

“We achieved radical change of our country and should have every hope that we are going to be a successful member state.”
Bulgaria would be an excellent model for the development of Western Balkan countries, Grancharova said.