Petar Ganev

At the end of May, the IME wrote that it was high time for a ramp-up of vaccine efforts in Bulgaria. By this, we meant that the vaccination process should be made the first and foremost governmental priority, and that as many tools as possible should be sought and employed to speed up the pace. The reason was obvious. The country was substantially far behind achieving the set target – vaccinating 70% of the adult population by the end of August.

The fight against speculation is a traditional topic for politicians, which became especially popular during the state of emergency declared on March 13, 2020. These are all topics that affect many spheres of our lives and where human action seeks a solution but politicians have put up unnecessary barriers.

Over the past 10 years, the Bulgarian economy has changed dramatically. The manufacturing sector is gradually shifting towards higher value added production. The number of employed in traditional industries, for instance the clothing industry and furniture manufacturing, has dropped significantly.

French President Emanuel Macron addressed the citizens of the EU is a special letter, entitled “For European renewal”, published simultaneously in select media in all member states. This move by Macron is not surprising.

In order for the EU to prosper as a political, economic and social construct, it needs to be more competitive – including in the field of tax policy, and also to respect sovereignty and find unanimously agreed solutions on major issues.

The presentation of the recently published ECB and EC reports was highly anticipated by Bulgarians, as the Bulgarian government\'s intention is to officially sign up for the eurozone waiting room by the end of June.

Four main challenges still lay ahead of the Bulgarian education system: 1) autonomy; 2) flexibility and choice; 3) involvement; and 4) practical skills. One way to look at these issues is to investigate the income distribution in the country.

There is a profound feeling of injustice rooted deep in the Bulgarian society. This can be clearly seen in international studies that cover topics such as trust in institutions and the rule of law. The same feeling of injustice is responsible for the widespread negative public perceptions towards Bulgarian entrepreneurs.

Although Bulgaria has officially been in a budgetary consolidation phase during the entire 2013-2015 period, public expenditure went out of control on several occasions. Yet again the newly presented medium-term budget framework provides for decreasing deficits, while current expenditures (and thus deficits) are being hiked.

The brief message of the report regarding the effectiveness of the banking supervision in Bulgaria is unambiguous: yes, the supervision has demonstrated weaknesses, and yes, the CCB management has circumvented and violated the regulations and the good banking practices.