Bulgarian society is in deep crisis and there is a complete lack of trust in Bulgarian institutions in the aftermath of last week's damning reports by the European Commission (EC) on Bulgaria, with which the EC froze about 800 million euro in funding, suspended two Bulgarian Government agencies from the European Union funds process and severely criticised the failings in working against organised crime and corruption and in judicial reform.

This is what sociologist Mira Yanova, head of pollster MBMD, and political analysts Ivan Krustev, chair of the board of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, and Ognyan Minchev, director of the Institute for Regional and International Studies, told a July 29 2008 news conference dedicated to the situation in Bulgaria after EC's reports.

“There is a serious radicalising of public opinion. Political authority after the reports seems to have collapsed,” Yanova said, basing her statement on the latest MBMD survey carried out on July 25 to 28. “Society is outraged,” she added, explaining that while in 1996-7 Bulgarians had also been filled with indignation for the Government, they had believed there were others to come and pull them out of the swamp. Now, however, people consider even those who have still not come to power, part of the political oligarchy, she said.

Bulgaria is an EU member state, but key democratic values such as the respect of voters for the authorities are missing, Yanova said, explaining that Bulgaria's political system needs to undergo a deep catharsis.

Rejecting conspiracy theories that there had been a plot against Bulgaria, manifesting itself in the EC's censure of the country, Ivan Krustev said that Bulgaria had been subject to special attention by the EC, but for other reasons. If the EC cannot show it has influence over member states whose accession to the EU has become contentious, then this would signal the end of the enlargement, he explained.

“There is huge loss of trust not only because Bulgaria has allegedly misappropriated the EU funds,” he said, explaining that the main problem was the Bulgarian Government's poor reaction to these alleged misappropriations. 

Krustev said that Bulgaria's economic growth had not helped improve the governance of the country. “There is an increasing trend towards emigration among the young and active part of Bulgarian society,” he explained, saying this was currently untypical for countries in Eastern Europe who have even seen some emigres returning in the light of the deteriorating economic situation in the USA.      

“In addition to the government of Bulgaria, Bulgarian society is also in a crisis,” Krustev said, explaining that more and more poorly educated people have entered the labour market and that people were extremely demotivated to do anything for the common good.

According to Ognyan Minchev, the most important impact the EC reports had on Bulgaria was that they sobered up Bulgarian society and made it realise where it really stood.

The current political infrastructure will not become adequate, he said. “They won't give anything more from themselves, not because they don't want to, but because they don't have anything more to give. The question is whether we'll sink with them, or we'll look for other options,” Minchev said.

There is such a symbiosis between the state and organised crime that fighting organised crime would mean the state “beating itself on the neck”, he said.

Contesting the belief that if Bulgaria could not itself find a way to improve its situation, the EU would do this for it, Minchev said: “The EU does not have this as its purpose. It is not obliged to fix us. What the EU is obliged to do, however, is to protect the bloc's interests from us, since we are obviously harming them,” he added.

We need to restore the civil pressure on the government structures, Minchev concluded.