Bulgaria News, Sofia News: The Sofia Echo - Bulgaria English-Language Newspaper

‘Criminal network’European anti-fraud office says Bulgaria not interested in busting the guilty

A criminal network alleged to have “close ties” to the current Bulgarian Government has misused 32 million euro in Sapard programme funds for agriculture, a report by the European Commission’s European Anti-Fraud Office (Olaf) said. The report, leaked to the media, with a copy read more

Who pays, staysElitsa Savova

On June 25, Bulgarian-language daily newspaper Dnevnik reported that Bulgaria had been expelled from the Danube Tourist Commission, depriving local companies of participating in international projects and from being promoted by the commission in 2008. By 2006, Bulgaria had read more

Audit the roads, audit the trafficAlex Bivol

Bulgaria’s troubles with building new roads and repairing the existing ones are well documented and have been a target of intense media scrutiny for months. The poor quality of the road infrastructure has been often blamed for the high number of traffic accidents in Bulgaria, read more

Kosovo: The tale of the fledgling and the hawksClive Leviev-Sawyer

States that manage to do rather well in spite of continuing campaigns against their very existence are hardly unprecedented. Taiwan is a case in point, given its industrialisation and level of exports in spite of Beijing regarding the island as nothing more than a breakaway read more

Business

Kremikovtzi: hung out to dryAlex Bivol

Every time it looks like the situation at Kremikovtzi, Bulgaria’s largest steel mill, could not get worse, it inevitably does. Once the pride of the communist government in Sofia, it now faces the prospect of sanctions worth hundreds of millions of leva as its production has read more

Features

BELGIUM IN BULGARIA: Business and poetry in the mind of a Belgian diplomatSvetlana Guineva

At first glance, Belgian ambassador Philippe Beke may not have much in common with Indiana Jones, the action hero he prefers over Batman no less, but that is only on the surface. For the seasoned diplomat is an action figure in his own merits. A character review: Beke likes read more

BELGIUM IN BULGARIA: History repeatedAn overview of Bulgarian-Belgian economic tiesElena Koinova

Whether it was because in 1894 then-Bulgarian prime minister Konstantin Stoilov vowed to turn the newly independent state into the “Belgium of the Orient”, or because Bulgaria was part of Belgium’s global business offensive, Belgium was the largest trade partner and investor in read more

BELGIUM IN BULGARIA: Thank God for Belgian beerMagdalena Rahn

Tasting the beer brewed at Luc’s Microbrewery for the first time engendered nothing short of incredulous outcries – “This is made in Bulgaria?” or something of the sort. Yes.The event was the Belgian culinary week at the Hilton Hotel in April 2008, and one of the products read more

BELGIUM IN BULGARIA: Helps fight osteoporosis

With a recognised brewing tradition dating back centuries, Belgium is one of the world’s leaders in top-notch beers, with the likes of its white/wheat beers, lambics, gueuzes, faros, krieks, and brown, red and golden beers, not to mention good old pils. Perhaps most lauded for read more

Opinion

OFFLINE: e-utopiaRene Beekman

The European Union’s Telecom Package, that was put through voting earlier this month, sparked reactions in blogs and forums ranging from extremely negative, bordering on scaremongering, to more balanced and even positive. The so-called Telecom Package is a mammoth of more than read more

RANDOM: Honeymoon’s overMagdalena Rahn

It is normal, probably, to expect things to have changed after having been away for any given length of time. Sometimes one wishes that things would change more, that, upon returning, the roads would be smoother, people would be more considerate and that there would not be so read more

MACRO: Dimitrov, damned Dimitrov and statisticsAlex Bivol

Economy Minister Petar Dimitrov is easy to make fun of. His quotes would be funny, because so often they verge on the ludicrous, if it were not for his blatant disregard of facts. In one of his latest media appearances, coming in one of the few television shows dedicated to read more

Venue Review

VENUE REVIEW: Taking on the summitBecky Stacey

Waking up, the summer sun shining through our bedroom window, feeling refreshed and ready to go after a carbohydrate-filled dinner and an early night in, we slowly get out of bed. That’s when it hits, the aches and pains of the previous two days spent hiking through Rila read more