Sergei Stanishev is the leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, the party tipped to take the largest slice of votes in this year's parliamentary elections.At BSP headquarters in Pozitano Street, he answered questions put to him by The Sofia Echo Editor-in-Chief Clive Leviev-Sawyer.Edited extracts:

Q: Should you assume office as the majority party in government, what should we expect to see in regard to domestic economic policy, to the pursuit of foreign investment, and how would these policies differ from those of the current government, and would there be changes in policy in dealing with multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank?
A: We have declared that the encouragement of investment policy would be one of our major priorities. It is about external and internal investments, because the Bulgarian economy needs to be restructured in a much more efficient way to be competitive in the EU, in the common market. If you look at the figures, we have a 13 per cent of foreign trade deficit, which proves the Bulgarian economy to be not very competitive. We have actually growth of consumed GDP, rather than real substantial growth of services, production, etc, and we are looking for different ways of encouraging investment in Bulgaria. One of the ways, definitely, is taxation policy. We are discussing, and have proposed, a zero corporate tax for reinvested profit, which, from our point of view, is a very strong incentive for companies, both external and Bulgarian, to reinvest in production, in the restructuring of the Bulgarian economy. Another tool for achieving this goal is a policy of lifting the many and unnecessary bureaucratic barriers which every enterprise meets in Bulgaria. Because even if you want to open a coffee shop, you need 15, even more, 17 different permits and licences. All this should be simplified radically. If you compare the number of different licence and permitting regimes in Bulgaria, it is at times more than the average of the EU – more than 300 in Bulgaria, and 60 in the union. We are also proposing that these issues be handled not directly by the state administration, but by the different chambers of the companies working in this sector. Give bigger rights and responsibilities to business. Speaking about foreign investment, I think that it is also very important to create a success story in Bulgaria. If you look at the overall figures of foreign direct investments in Bulgaria, you will see that quite a small proportion is actually Greenfield investment. Most of the investment has been made through privatisation of enterprises already existing for many years now, most of them quite profitable actually. It is also of course a positive factor, because the international companies are bringing new expertise, management, which is much more flexible, market orientated, and based on European and international experience. But Bulgaria needs new investments directed into new products that are competitive internationally and in the EU economy. So also from the point of view of the shares in overall investment, only 25 per cent in production, a huge amount in the banking sector due to the privatisation in recent years of a number of banks – most banks in Bulgaria are now foreign and international owned, tourism – declared as a national priority – has attracted only eight per cent of FDI, and the trade sector is quite substantial, over 15 – almost 20 per cent, but it also not productive. I think you will see that there is no very solid government policy of attracting foreign investments. You just need to enter the web site of the Foreign Investment Agency and compare it to a similar agency in other similar Central and Eastern European countries to see what is the level of policy in these fields. There are no clear rules, incentives, etc. So this has to be changed and doing so will a priority for a BSP-led government, to attract a strong international producer who would prove that Bulgaria is competitive in comparison to other CEE countries, and which would lead to a bigger flow of other smaller and medium sized investors. In order to attract foreign investors, it is very important, as well, to have a working efficient, transparent, and accessible judicial system. This is one of the structural problems of the country. I think that the BSP has the least responsibility for the state of the judicial system, because most years while it was transformed, in the way it was transformed, and leading to the result which we face now, it was the right wing forces who were leading in this field, who were creating the legislation, who were appointing people there – it is quite absurd, for a democratic country, for an independent judicial system when leading personalities in the judicial system are declaring that they are supporters of one or another political idea. It has to be impartial and to be fully independent. We are now working, very hard, our experts, on our proposals for judicial reform. It is of paramount importance, because our understanding is that without a working judicial system, you can neither talk about civil society and a democratic country, nor about a functioning market economy. It is important also both for Bulgarian businesses and citizens and for our international partners, both private and institutional. In recent years we have had a very solid relationship with the IMF and the World Bank, discussing the current situation in the country, our ideas of escaping, avoiding the risks, and threats to stability of the Bulgarian economy, and looking for a better performance. We cherish this dialogue with the IMF and the World Bank, as with independent and private international financial institutions, investment banks, houses, etc and we have declared and we have agreed that we shall make presentations about our governing intentions and priorities, both for the IMF and World Bank in future. We are preparing to finalise this work, about our priorities of government, by the end of March. By now we had more than 20 discussions, in public, in which experts not only from the BSP or the left centre political spectrum were invited, but also many individual experts willing to give their ideas about how to achieve more in the economic, social, performance of the country and many other fields. Now we are at the final stage when all these ideas have to be structured according to priorities – because we are a very realistic political party now, having different experiences from the past, we understand that we cannot resolve all the problems at once, we have to have clear priorities. It is important for us to preserve macro economic stability, in the first place, because this is the basis; secondly, to make a better macro economic performance, from the point of view of real growth and making the Bulgarian economy more competitive and productive, to have better and new products, and on this basis to reform and to reorient such fields as education and health care towards the citizen and the consumer. Because if you look at both fields, Bulgaria is losing positions. The services are becoming worse. They are not accessible. They are not of good quality. And in the long term, these fields are very important for the country. Because you cannot be competitive in the 21st century with a younger generation which is not well educated, while you have 100 000 young people illiterate, not to speak of computer knowledge and an understanding of the new economy. You cannot talk of a competitive nation which is rapidly decreasing, vanishing, with the demographic crisis, and with health care which is at a very low level, especially out of the capital and bigger cities. The health care system should be based on several pillars, of which for us a major one is the principle of solidarity. We cannot make it fully market-orientated. It’s not market-orientated in any of the European countries. Not in the full sense. The market has its share, but there is a balance.

Q: Privatisation – in the first few weeks of taking office, whatever happens in the next six months, what we will see you do?
A: In the first few weeks? I don’t think any government can do anything it wants in the first few weeks of its activity. In the field of privatisation, there has been a very ideological approach in the past 15 years. The overall structural reform was just concentrated on, limited to, privatisation, with the understanding that every privatisation is a benefit, is something good, which is not exactly the case, because we saw many cases where in Bulgaria when successful enterprises, or enterprises that had potential, were privatised to Bulgarian companies that didn’t have the management skills, that didn’t have the capital, to develop them, both on the Bulgarian market and in the international market. And very often privatisation was made towards the political clientele of the governing party. This process was mainly directed by the right wing political parties. So we are looking at the process of privatisation from a very pragmatic point of view, and we have many conditions, as a political party, in order to see every individual privatisation as a success. First of all, it should lead these enterprises or sector of the economy to be more competitive, internally and internationally. It should provide better management of the company. It should guarantee that the company is not buying the enterprise in order to eliminate competition from Bulgarian producers, but that they are intending to develop it, and to have the necessary capital, its own, or borrowed. And this privatisation should encourage competitiveness in the certain sector.

Q: Or simply purchasing something to simply sell it on the turn and make a quick profit without doing anything with it?
A: This is not the approach of which we approve. I told you that the major elements and criteria for a successful privatisation from our point of view, and another element is important for us, the social aspect. Because most privatisations are related directly to cutting the numbers of employees. So the social aspect should be taken into consideration. We have entered a stage where this government is beginning to privatise state and public monopolies, replacing them by private monopolies. And it is a well- known phrase that there is one thing worse than a public monopoly, it is a private monopoly. Privatisation should lead to better competitiveness. This is the case with BTC, with Bulgartabac, the energy sector in many ways. We are not ideological, we are pragmatic. From the point of view of the Bulgarian economic interest.

Q: Is there a model in any other country that you look to as one in which privatisation was conducted properly?
A: In Bulgaria privatisation is an average word, very popular at certain points, seen as a universal recipe for the future of the economy, with the ideology that privatised enterprises will flourish inevitably because the market logic will fix everything. That ‘market’ is almost a miracle. You need clear state priorities. You need a macro economic policy, which cannot be produced by private enterprise, in order the make the Bulgarian economy more competitive. I cannot say one precise example of a privatisation as a model which we would adopt. More or less, this process is at an end. There are not too many things left to privatise. But I told you what would be the philosophy in our handling of this process. Every privatisation that is directed to greater competitiveness, productivity and a better market, internally and internationally, is welcome. But the public interest and the Bulgarian national interest must be preserved as well. It’s a balance. Of course, every company bidding for a public entity wants to buy it as cheap as possible, in order to make bigger profits. It is natural. This is the market logic. But it is the government that should provide the balance, on the other hand, to have a realistic assessment of the funds, of the assets and liabilities of the enterprise, to negotiate in a proper way, to put forward conditions which will provide competitiveness in the future and existence and development of this enterprise, and to make this process of privatisation competitive, not to select one company, very often a financial structure which doesn’t have experience in this particular field, which wants to buy cheap and sell it expensively. But to attract companies with experience, good management, which would lead to bigger results in the overall picture of the Bulgarian economy. Because for many international companies, Bulgaria is just a point on the map. For us, it is our country.

Q: EU accession – would you make any changes in how this country is engaging with the EU at the moment, make any changes to the team that is engaging with the EU?
A: Well, I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation that my concern is that many Bulgarian politicians, including this government, are not fair enough, honest enough in presenting the EU membership to the Bulgarian public and Bulgarian business. They only stress the good side. EU accession has turned into the super-goal of Bulgarian transition. Creating very high expectations and the feeling that when we enter the Union, the Union will take care of us. You should help yourself, in order for the Union to take care of you, in the first place. As you know, the higher the expectations, the deeper the disappointment. So this approach, which is typical for the current and previous government, is creating a risk of future Euro-scepticism. And, from our point of view, the best way to prevent it is Euro-realism. You have to be fair, and concrete, and informative with Bulgarian society about the obligations undertaken in the process of negotiations, on every individual chapter and the overall outcome, for Bulgaria. You need to have an informative campaign, but not a PR campaign, a campaign of real substance, information for Bulgarian business, in order to help Bulgarian business restructure and modernise, be ready for the challenges of the common European Union market and the criteria for production in all other fields – ecology, etc – this is where we believe the government is not doing well. We also do not believe that the government finalised the process of negotiations in the best possible way. If you compare to how negotiations were handled by other countries – well , of course we can hardly compare to Poland, because everybody knew that without Poland, the first big expansion of new EU members, the 10, would have been political nonsense. So they were initially in a strong position to negotiate. But I believe that more could be done to defend Bulgarian interests in this process. So, it is not by chance that I saw in the Bulgarian media, comments by Polish politicians and people who engaged in the EU integration saying that the Bulgarian team was called in Brussels, “yes men”. My understanding is that in order to be a true and efficient member of the EU, you have to think and behave as a European, which is to think and behave as a real partner. As an equal partner. This is the philosophy of the EU, the philosophy of balance of interests, the philosophy of co-operation, the philosophy of the win-win game. And Bulgarian politicians, including those who are responsible for European integration, should be directed in this direction. But what is also very important is to have a solid policy for preparing well-trained people who will be able to act in this European institutional, bureaucratic environment, to do their best. So administrative reform is very important from this point of view as well. And we shall do our best in government to develop and impose e-government in as many fields as possible in the soonest way. Because it is also a very strong tool against corruption and against bureaucratic decisions without clear rules. It limits obstacles to free economic initiative.
We also believe that EU membership merits a referendum. This is an old position of the BSP. This referendum should be used to inform Bulgarian society. So decisions are made with open eyes, with a clear consciousness of the benefits and the risks for Bulgaria. It should be clear that the BSP will campaign in favour of a “Yes” vote. From my point of view, although (a referendum) is not a formal criterion for the EU, it is expected for every country not to decide just on the basis of political parties and parliamentary decisions, but our European partners and European nations want to see that this is the will of the Bulgarian people. I don’t think a referendum on EU membership should coincide or be close to any internal political event, such as general elections or presidential elections. It is an individual topic, a theme, and it is a national theme, a priority for all political parties. It should not be made partisan. Neither should political parties look for short-term benefits in electoral terms. It is a risk for the idea.

Q: Politics, as such. What has intrigued me in the past three years I have spent in this country is trying to place the BSP in the European political spectrum. To which party elsewhere in Europe do you regard yourselves as most analogous? Are you Schroederites, are you Italians, are you Blairites…?
A: We are Bulgarians. Look, I think that the BSP made tremendous progress from the point of view of its international legitimacy in the last few years. For many years, there was a certain scepticism on behalf of our political partners in Europe and around the world about the extent of internal reform of the BSP. Is it a truly social democratic party in the modern European sense of the term or is it just faking reform and trying to present itself better than it is? More modern than it is? I would say, as a former international secretary of the party, I would really declare that you cannot trick the international socialist family just by demonstrating reforms, because they are following the situation close enough, they have many channels of information, there were several missions of the Party of European Socialists with representatives of different parties, before decision was made to adopt BSP as a full member of the Socialist International, which is practically unprecedented, because we jumped over two stages of membership, observer and consultative, and were approved in 2003 as a full member of SI, which is the biggest international political family. We are currently associate members of the Party of European Socialists and the decision on full membership will be taken as soon as Bulgaria signs the (EU accession) treaty, because the rules say that you can only be a full member of the PES when your country has already signed the treaty of accession to the EU, because the PES is the family of social democratic parties from the European Union. It is very significant success. You should also understand that we are living in a very rapidly changing world, and many of the old cliches are not working, simply, in the new world and every party should find its own national model of development, based on common principles, the principles of freedom, solidarity, the principles of fairness and equal chances as a start in your life, so this is the reason why you have differences between individual parties, because they are based on national traditions, based on the challenges and the problems which every country’s facing, so you need to find your national model to work it out. In many ways, we are more liberal than many of the traditional social democratic parties. But, the major challenge in Bulgarian society now is how to change the tendency of the past 15 years of social disintegration and atomisation of society, into a tendency of social integration which would make a balance, a combination of the market economy, and a social society. A social society of solidarity, of feeling that you belong to one entity, and that you are not by yourself.
By the way, speaking about the different models…if you look even at the names of the different parties, in Northern Europe – Scandinavia, Germany – they are mainly named social democratic parties; in Southern Europe, the Mediterranean, mainly socialist parties, like Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Greece; in Britain and the Netherlands, it’s labour party. So just different labels which reflect some social and cultural sensitivities and specific features. It is only an asset for the international socialist family to have different variations and national models, because uniformity is death in the modern world, and in general, I believe. This is one of the major deficits and failures of the previous system in the Soviet bloc – uniformity.

Q: With which parties in Bulgaria would you feel most comfortable serving in coalition; to clarify the question, given your statements this week about the Coalition for Bulgaria and wanting to have an ‘ecological’ party; in this context, I’m talking about others, the NMSII, Movement for Rights and Freedoms, and others.
A: You understand that before the elections, every political party and coalition is looking at how to achieve the best result, the maximum. We have declared our political goal is to achieve an absolute majority. We realise that the problems and challenges which Bulgaria is facing are not purely party challenges, not just challenges for the left and the right, you need to have a balance of policies, and we shall be looking for a broader coalition, and this is quite understandable. But I clearly defined at the last national meeting of the BSP the limits of the compromise. We are not ready to participate in a coalition just for the sake of being in power and to cover and to take responsibility for a government and a coalition which is not the best thing needed for the success of the country, or based on the major role of other political parties in order to preserve everything the way that it is. Because we don’t think that currently the country is governed in the best possible way, with the clearest priorities and in the public interest, in the interest of the strongest position Bulgaria could take in the European Union. The limit is the essence of the policies. We believe that there is a need of change. And, on this basis, we shall negotiate in the next Parliament with the political parties which will be represented. I cannot, and I think that no one can, predict which parties exactly will be in Parliament and with what number of MPs. It is very hypothetical. We can only make predictions, let’s say, two months before the elections, more or less. If that.
We also believe that the next government should be based on a coalition with clearly written policies and priorities, responsibilities and rights of every participant. If you look at the current government, it has two pages of agreement. What can you say in two pages? It is based on distribution of posts in the ministries and I don’t think it is a good basis for solid policies. We have also declared that if we have an absolute majority and we do not agree with the other parties in Parliament on the substance of the policy, we would not run away from our responsibility to the citizens who have supported us. Because our will is to have a broader coalition. So I wouldn’t put any limits in advance whom we could talk to. But we need fair negotiations, based on principles, with clear responsibilities, with clear priorities and with intentions about what should be done in government. Because I believe a next government without the BSP would be very vicious. What the right-wing political parties are proclaiming now – we should unite, we should make a broad centre right coalition in order to stall the BSP from being in power – to my understanding, any policy based on an “anti” basis without a positive programme is vicious and without perspective. It is a dead-end road. And we can see how this model works at the level of the municipality of Sofia. It was created at the end of 2003 after the municipal elections, with a number of centre right political parties supporting and providing a majority for the mayor, Mr Sofianski. But in one year, it is already not functioning. There is not a normal governing process in Sofia.
Q: Should you become the governing party, whether with a decisive majority or as part of a governing coalition – the key posts: the chief secretary of the Interior Ministry, the chief of the defence ministry, the leaders of the foreign ministry, the head of the Bulgarian National Bank, the public broadcaster, and other security and law enforcement agencies – would you make some changes to these leaderships?
A: Well, I believe that the Bulgarian public administration should become more and more professional and not politicised. The politicisation and the purges which happened after every new majority coming into power is not a European practice. It is making public administration very unstable and very unproductive and not professional, because every person who is imposed for political reasons without qualifications for a certain post knows that he is there for four years at most, and then he should leave, and he is thinking in the short term about his own interests and his own future, without often thinking about the more general interests and efficiency of his work. This is our approach and yesterday, for example, we discussed our project for the foreign policy, and declared that we intend to adopt in the new Parliament a new bill on the diplomatic service, which would give clear rules, professional rules, and tasks for the diplomacy, based on the professional qualities of the service, and it should be valid for every ministry. Limiting the number of political appointees. Which doesn’t mean that someone who was appointed by this government but without qualifications should feel safe. Qualifications and efficiency are the criteria about preserving the jobs.
I think that in diplomacy you need less political appointees, more professional ones. This is a principle that has not been followed by any of the recent governments. If you compare again, the foreign ministry, there were just a few people replaced by the government of the BSP in 1995-1996, and these are the statistics, you had more than 200 people sacked by (former foreign minister) Mrs Nadezhda Mihailova. There were several waves of purges in the foreign ministry – in 1991, 1997. I think one of the problems of Bulgarian public administration is exactly this fact that many professionals were expelled due to their political affiliations and sympathies, even. I believe that public administration should not be politicised. It is a very vicious approach and a very inefficient approach.
If you look, again, at the judiciary. We very often stress on the structural position of one or another branch of the judiciary, thinking that this is the universal cure for everything. It is not. Because individuals, people, are very important. In the early 1990s, between 1991 and 1994, 1200 magistrates left the judicial system – or were expelled – from there, through political pressure. What can you expect from a newcomer, very often politically appointed? Even from a professional point of view, with the best willingness on behalf of the personality, it takes time to learn and to become efficient. Not to mention that some people are completely without qualification, and I am not just talking about the judiciary, I am talking about every field.

Q: The election campaign – the posters, the statements – what will your selling points be? Not at the level of sophisticated political debate, but what will you be telling the folks out there?
A: I think that most Bulgarians are expecting a change, of how the government is functioning, of how politicians and parties address problems. I think the only party that can provide certain change of attitude, a change of policies, to make it more socially orientated and down to the ground, closer to the people, is the BSP.

Q: And clean government? The taxi driver who brought me here said he was voting for you – he said that when the BSP was in power, he had certainty, but since the BSP left, there’s been nothing but corruption. Will that be part of your platform as well?
A: You cannot fight corruption just through campaigns, which has happened in the past very often. Of course, these measures from the prosecutors office are needed and important, but you can only limit it and fight it through the major tool, which is to have less rules, more clearly cut, with clear procedures, and transparency is very important. You should motivate every decision strongly, you need a public debate on every issue. And this is the reason why I declared that no major issue of policy making would be taken behind the curtains, without a dialogue, with, for example in the economic and social field, without a triangle dialogue between the government, the trade unions, and the major employers’ organisations. Of course, there are conflicts of interests. But you need to listen to the different sides in order to find the balance, and the criteria for this balance is the interest of a faster and more successful economic and social development of Bulgaria, in the European context.
This is why one of the labels of the next government led by the BSP is “a government of dialogue, responsibility and control” because currently, for example, you do not know who is taking responsibility for wrong decisions. It is absurd what is going on.

Q: For once and for all, your stance on the Currency Board?
A: As I mentioned at the beginning, the dialogue with the IMF is very important for us. We are keeping it both in Sofia and with the missions of the IMF who are visiting Bulgaria, as well as in Washington, as with my visit in May last year. We have declared that we see the Currency Board as a very important anchor of stability for the country’s financial and economic system. And in my (January 15) interview with Reuters and the Economist Intelligence Unit, this was the stress that I made – that we need the Currency Board because the Bulgarian economy is still very fragile, and we should keep it, as I said then, at least until 2007. Because, after 2007 you need to comply, and to negotiate, talk to the European Central Bank, to the European partners, about what will be the way of entrance to the eurozone.
My personal view is that if we orient ourselves to entering the eurozone in 2009, it doesn’t make much sense to cut the Currency Board for two years and conduct some different kind of policies which would expose Bulgaria’s economy towards certain risks – of over-expenditure, etc. Because there is always pressure for bigger spending. Also, there is a risk because we have a very huge indebtedness in the country, of 40 billion leva approximately, compared to GDP, between individual subjects and entities in the economy, and there might be a risk that certain companies would try to lift down this burden from themselves through pressure on the exchange rate, and create instability. But you need to discuss it with the European Union. I think Bulgaria has a good basis, and what I also said in the interview – although it was not presented in the Reuters report – was that we should follow the experience of the countries like Estonia and Lithuania, which were, and still are, in a Currency Board and which entered the EU, so they agreed with the EU that the Currency Board would be preserved. But it is not just a matter of individual Bulgarian sovereignty. The individual sovereignty is ending in 2007. You need to comply to a greater and greater extent with the ECB, with the Stability and Growth Pact regulations which are valid for the EU. This is the logic, and I also said in the interview that we would not take any risks and adventures that would endanger financial stability. As I said to you early in the interview, the preservation of stability is the basis on which you should construct more and achieve more.
Our approach is very responsible.
Of course, I understand the Minister of Finance (Milen Velchev) who took out one part of a sentence and presented it in a way that ‘the BSP will cut the Currency Board on January 1 2007’ – I understand him, because it is a period of political campaigning, he will, other representatives in the majority will try to use it for political purposes and is trying to distract public attention from the extremely embarrassing and inconvenient questions which we asked about the debt towards Bulgaria is managed and handled. We proposed a committee to investigate all the information available and make an objective assessment. What did the majority do? They created a parliamentary committee, not on the issue of how Bulgaria’s debt is managed, but on the issue of how it is accumulated. Twenty or 30 years ago – distracting from the attention from the real problem that Bulgaria is facing now, not 30 years ago. And about the debt towards Bulgaria? We asked questions – is it true that the debt of many countries to Bulgaria has been sold through consultative companies at a very low price – between 10, 15 and 25 per cent. We do not have the objective information because everything is hidden behind the curtains, and the explanation that all of this information is confidential. Initially, the government was keeping silent, but then they recognised that the debt had been sold, but there are no official figures. And there is no comparison, on the basis of official figures, at what rate the debt towards Bulgaria has been sold in comparison to other CEE countries with a similar record of foreign debt towards them – like the Czech Republic, or Poland, or Hungary. Let’s compare, who has done a good job, who hasn’t.

Q: You talked at the BSP national meeting on January 9 about reducing the tax burden, about reducing VAT, differentiated taxes for medicines, bread and milk…given that this must inevitably result in a reduction in revenue, how do you intend to make up the shortfall?
A: First of all, it’s an idea about not one year, but a longer period. As I said, it should be made stage by stage, by very attentive calculations, that would not endanger the income part of the budget. Look, I’m not a fool, in order to have a reasonable expenditures you need a good income part, and we in our discussion on budgetary policy we stand for a more responsible approach and more accurate calculation of both incomes and expenditures in the budget. So these changes should be made in stages and, of course, you should increase the basis of incomes. Look at the customs office for example, with all the miracles promised through the Crown Agents, the outcome is not so brilliant. Okay, so they declare a substantial increase of the incomes, of the collection of taxes through the customs. But it is mainly proportional, less to the growth of the imports. So nothing has changed dramatically. You need, in order to limit the corruption, the smuggling through customs, an electronic information system. There is a project and even computers waiting for many years to make the whole network which would make it much more difficult to hide imports and to provide a greater collection in the customs. It is the same in the taxation system. Actually, one of the priorities will be a more transparent and efficient collection of incomes, and more controlled spending of the revenues which exist in the budget, which should be programme-orientated. We are not ready just to pour money into systems that are not reformed and not efficient. In health care, for example, you have, from some estimates by experts, one third of the money stolen in one way or another, and it is absurd that the national health care system, doesn’t have a system of electronic information. It is a priority. You need to see how money was spent, and what for.

Q: Assuming that you may become Prime Minister, how would you characterise your relationship with President Georgi Purvanov?
A: First of all, I would like to stress that personalities are important, but policies are in first place for us.
We have one common interest. To make the policy of the country more socially orientated. Towards a model of social integration, which is actually the European model of society, which is written in the new European constitution, very clearly. The charter of social rights is wholly incorporated in the new European constitution, together with the political rights, together with democracy, functioning market economy, etc. Purvanov won the elections with the slogan of “the social President” – the problem is that in the Bulgarian constitution, the President has quite limited authorities, especially in this economic and social field. He mainly has responsibilities in foreign policy, national security, etc. And what we see now is that he is not able to produce such policies which he is willing to. I think that the President would rather prefer a responsible government which has priorities close to his own understanding of the needs of the country than to have a vague government without clear priorities and a government which is very jealous about every initiative of the President. And we have seen many times, on particular issues, where the government has just boycotted initiatives of the President because it is jealous, because it doesn’t want the President to gain something. We will not act in this manner and I am confident that a BSP-led government would have a good, proper dialogue with the President, and we would respect each other, and it would work for the benefit of the country.