“When a person starts to feel people may praise him highly, but they do not think of him as someone who can win votes, the bell starts ringing that it is time for him to go,” former Bulgarian Prime Minister Filip Dimitrov (1991/92) told the morning talk show of Bulgarian National Television concerning his withdrawal from political life.

“At the beginning of 1991, Bulgaria looked like a country for which there is no hope,” he said. “But Bulgaria managed to change its trajectory, the direction of its development.”

“In 1992 Bulgaria was viewed as the hidden pearl of the Balkans, a lot of hopes were laid on it, even maybe more hopes than it lived up to,” Dimitrov said, explaining that the sign Bulgaria started its way towards the European Union and Nato was clearly given back then.

“Bulgaria is now in the Western world, in the club of rich and happy states, the poorest and unhappiest of them, but still among them,” he said.