On the same day that Bulgarian National Television announced a documentary to counter the image painted by the BBC film about the Mogilino social care home for disabled children, five Bulgarian members of the European parliament announced and signed a declaration in which they call for "a common European policy on the upbringing and education of underprivileged children."
In 2007, a BBC documentary about the life of children in the Mogilino home led to international public expressions of disgust over the conditions that the children had to live in.
One day before the Bulgarian screening of the BBC film in Sofia on November 6 2007, Bulgarian daily Standart quoted Labour and Social Policy Minister Emilia Maslarova as saying that the home would be closed and the children would be relocated.
On January 30 2008, Bulgarian television bTV announced that its programme Velikolpnata Shestorka (the Fantastic Six) had collected over 611 000 leva for the construction of the first "little home for children" for the children from the Mogilino orphanage.
The Bulgarian MEPs who signed the petition were Filiz Hyusmenova, Metin Kazak, Vladko Panayotov, Bilyana Raeva and Iliana Yotova, a media statement from the MEPs said.
The statement calls on the European Commission "to support and encourage efforts to improve conditions for abandoned children at all levels of government."
It "demands that improved care for underprivileged young people and those in care become an immediate priority for European policy-makers until the degrading inequality of children unwanted by their families is eradicated and they are integrated into the society."
The declaration called "for heightened levels of monitoring until disparities in care standards disappear."
The MEPs insisted that the EC "opposes attempts to politicise and use for cheap populism such complex social problems, end encourages member states to share best practises and positive legislative solutions for raising underprivileged children."
Lastly, the declaration calls on the EC to "instruct its president to forward this declaration, together with the names of the signatories, to the parliaments of the member states, the Council and the Commission."
