Bulgaria

It is now official – Bulgaria will become the 21st member of the euro area. This concludes a years-long process of preparing the country to join the monetary union. The first euro coins and notes will appear in Bulgarian wallets on January 1, 2026. In June 2025, EU finance ministers unanimously approved Bulgaria’s entry into the eurozone. The Bulgarian lev will be replaced by the euro at the beginning of 2026, with the exchange rate set at 1 euro = 1.95583 leva.

The declining number of nurses in Bulgaria over recent decades puts hospital healthcare services at risk. There is an unwritten rule that every doctor should have between two and three nurses to support their work effectively. However, in Bulgaria, this ratio is lower. While smaller hospitals in remote and sparsely populated areas are most affected by this issue, larger hospitals are not immune to it either.

In 2024, Romania will break the 50% government debt limit, becoming the EU country with the largest increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio since the start of the pandemic. High budget deficits - levels of 6-9% of GDP - have pushed Romania\'s debt from 35% in 2019 to 52% in 2024, with a forecast of close to 60% in 2026. In just a few years, Romania will likely have a higher debt than Germany.

For the third consecutive year, the percentage of countries experiencing a decline in the rule of law has decreased. Additionally, for the first time in five years, more countries have shown improvement in the \"absence of corruption\" indicator. Bulgaria, however, is not among these countries. From 2016 to 2024, the state of fundamental human rights has worsened in 81% of the countries surveyed, including Bulgaria.

In October, Bulgarian interim Finance Minister Lyudmila Petkova held a press conference regarding the 2025 state budget and the medium-term framework for 2025–2028. The biggest surprise was the expert assessment, based on current policies and enacted legislation, which projected a nominal spending increase of BGN 18.1 billion in 2025. Such a significant rise, even as an expert projection, raises several questions:

In November, the Institute for Market Economics’ (IME) introduced its White Paper, Unlocking Growth: The Path Forward After the Elections. But what are the goals we can realistically achieve in the medium term? Below, we present eight fundamental goals with a four-year horizon that are fully attainable and would significantly improve the country’s development potential and quality of life.

Earlier this month, it became clear that the World Bank has classified Bulgaria as a high-income country. This news is an important reflection of the long-term growth trajectory and catching-up process of the developed countries, particularly those in the European Union. Still, it is far from meaning that Bulgaria already has a guaranteed spot in the rich countries club and does not have any difficult problems to solve.

Bulgaria loses between 2.4 and 4.9 billion USD of additional GDP per year due to discrimination against LGBTI+ people, as estimated in a report[1] by the Institute for Market Economics (IME). Bulgaria\'s GDP could be 2.5% to 5% higher were there to be full acceptance and equality for LGBTI+ people, according to an estimate by IME based on the 2023 data.

In the past weeks, the convergence reports of the European Commission and the European Central Bank were published. The result for Bulgaria is expected - the inflation rate is higher than the reference value and therefore the country does not meet this Eurozone membership criterion. In practice, this puts an end to the question of whether the country can adopt the euro on 1 January 2025 - no, there is no such possibility.

Bulgaria\'s justice deficits have become an invariable part of local political discourse. Often, this leads to numerous statutory changes and rarely to a quality change of the environment.