Who Is Rumen Radev? with Maria Simeonova [PODCAST]

How has the recent election transformed the Bulgarian political scene? What will be the European priorities of the newly formed government? What is Rumen Radev’s main message? And what was his secret that helped him ensure a win? Leszek Jazdzewski (Fundacja Liberte!) talks with Maria Simeonova, the Head of the Sofia office at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). Her areas of focus include EU foreign policy, the Black Sea region, Bulgaria’s role in the EU, and the Western Balkans. Prior to assuming this role, she served as coordinator for the Sofia office and the Western Balkans at ECFR. Before joining ECFR in September 2020, Simeonova worked as a civil servant at the Bulgarian Ministry of Finance.

Leszek Jazdzewski (LJ): Is there a specific aspect of the Bulgarian elections or politics that you feel has been overlooked and that the audience should understand?

Maria Simeonova (MS): In Bulgaria, we have become accustomed to voting over the past four or five years. We have voted eight times in parliamentary elections alone, not to mention local and presidential elections. We have set a record of sorts. Since these elections were distinct, we managed to produce a level of political fragmentation that is difficult to replicate in Europe, though it is a trend beginning to occur throughout the continent. This has attracted interest, particularly as the Bulgarian elections followed the Hungarian elections.

There are many important elections taking place in Europe this year and next year; logically, they pose a vital question regarding their meaning for the future of Europe. The election result in a country on the eastern flank is crucial for what the European Union is planning to do in security, defense, and competitiveness. While I have received many similar questions, what I would like to be asked is how Bulgarians are feeling about this.

LJ: How do Bulgarians feel about these results, and what is the sentiment regarding the prospect of a government that may finally last for a full four-year term?

MS: For many Bulgarians, this is quite unprecedented. A victory of this magnitude for a single party is something we have not seen since the 1990s. There are many people who do not remember such an occurrence. It is very different. After voting seven times and witnessing the inability of political parties to offer stability, solid political programs, or credible answers to the questions posed by citizens – and failing to offer solutions to problems we have struggled to address for many years, such as corruption and state capture – this result provides a sense of relief. I would not say there is widespread enthusiasm about the result itself, but there is quite a relief. Whether that relief is associated with positive or negative outcomes remains to be seen; however, Bulgarian citizens required such a result to slow down and attempt to navigate such complex geopolitical, economic, and financial environments. During this crisis, we became full-fledged members of the Schengen area and joined the Eurozone. Right now is the moment to slow down and attempt to imagine where Bulgaria should position itself in this very turbulent and complex geopolitical environment.

LJ: What were the structural reasons for the political fragmentation that followed the collapse of the GERB party in 2020, and how was it possible that so many elections failed to produce a clear majority until now?

Maria Simeonova (MS): I will go back to 2020 and try to describe the feeling in Bulgaria and the environment and the circumstances. Boyko Borisov is probably the most famous Bulgarian politician. He became prime minister in 2009, which is only two years after Bulgaria joined the European Union in 2007, and his party GERB managed to be the dominant party in Bulgaria in political life between 2009 and 2020; I would say until a week ago. So, we have had eleven or twelve years of GERB dominating the political scene, but not just that. It was GERB dominating the narratives around what it means for Bulgaria to be part of the European Union and NATO, because we joined NATO in 2004. It was the responsibility of GERB as the political force at the helm of the country to explain to Bulgarian citizens the rights, but also the responsibilities.

Throughout the years, Bulgaria struggled to address the problems of corruption and the unfinished work on judicial reforms. This is why only for Bulgaria and Romania, a special mechanism was created, the so-called CVM, Coordination and Verification mechanism, that was supposed to last for just a few years to monitor the progress on those reforms that we had not finished at the time of the entry to the European Union, but it lasted much longer than initially planned. Therefore, this is, on one hand, the lack of progress by Bulgaria on fighting corruption and delivering on the judicial reform. On the other hand, Bulgaria was expected to bring know-how and expertise on the EU foreign policy debate when it comes to the EU integration of the Western Balkans and the broader Black Sea region.

Bulgaria in those years, the first years after joining the European Union, focused more on itself. It focused more on completing the EU integration process, meaning joining the Schengen area and joining the Eurozone. This became the foreign policy priority for Bulgaria, instead of projecting some kind of foreign policy leverage or knowledge in the region. The foreign policy priorities of Bulgaria from this point of view were very introverted; these were the priorities of the governments that were formed after we joined the European Union. At some point, when Bulgaria did not take this position that is expected from an external border country in the European Union, and the problems with the rule of law and the corruption were not disappearing, this led to some dissatisfaction, and this erupted in 2020. There were protests against, basically, corruption, and back then, Boyko Borisov’s party gave us the embodiment of this lack of progress on the anti-corruption front. This is when the political fragmentation basically started.

Imagine 2020; those years around 2020, we have had COVID-19, and we have had two years later the war in Ukraine. Before the war in Ukraine, we had rising energy crises that were also felt here. The simultaneous happening of many crises, not just in Bulgaria but in Europe, led to this proliferation of political projects that were relying on populist slogans in order to gain support from the voters. Many reasons for fragmentation and many reasons for division lines were present in 2020 when this crisis of the political parties in Bulgaria started. The internal trigger was the protest against widespread corruption. On the other hand, when you started the cycle of votes of the elections, the creation of small political projects used one single wish to attract voters but were not capable of producing a comprehensive political program for governing the country.

LJ: Who is Rumen Radev, and what is the secret to his political influence and recent success?

MS: He is both a public figure and very secretive. Between 2020 and the elections on the 19th of April, the Bulgarian parties failed to offer a stable ruling government. We did have three regular governments being formed throughout these five or six years, but the last one lasted for a year, and that was the longest. In this environment of political parties gaining twenty or twenty-something percent maximum of the support of the citizens, it was very difficult for coalitions. But Rumen Radev was the only stable factor that exists in Bulgarian politics.

As a president at the time – he won the elections and became president in 2017 supported by the Bulgarian Socialist Party – he won the second mandate four years later. His second mandate overlapped with the political crisis and revealed a look at the constitutional arrangement. The president in Bulgaria is directly elected, but he does not have executive power; it is more of a representative function. However, in the process of political crisis, it became evident that the president is the one who appoints. He appointed many caretaker governments; it was the president who decided who the caretaker prime minister would be, taking the ministers and so on. Throughout those five years of political instability, Rumen Radev exercised power through the appointments of caretaker governments, and we have had plenty.

On the other hand, the presidency as an institution gives a platform to address the nation. Imagine the environment of economic, financial, and political instability, with the war in Ukraine and the war in the Middle East. In this setup, the president had a platform from which to criticize regular governments or to express his views. Very often Rumen Radev would say things that the biggest majority of Bulgarians would like to hear. This leads to the Bulgarian president traditionally enjoying a high approval rating, but it is also the fact that Rumen Radev was a president during unprecedented turbulent times. After seven snap elections, it was clear that he was the only one capable of breaking that pattern of fragmentation.

It was expected that he would at some point get into politics and create a party of his own. He resigned a few months before the end of his second mandate. To many, that was a surprise because he is a former military pilot, and there were some expectations he would finish the job and then jump into that race. But he resigned in the beginning of this year, capitalizing on huge protests in Bulgaria that erupted in November and December last year. Those protests were triggered by the way the state budget was negotiated, but the reason behind them was again the protest of the Bulgarians against widespread corruption and state capture. He capitalized on his popularity as a president; he capitalized on the protests from December last year, which were the biggest since the 1990s in Bulgaria; and he capitalized on the fact that in the past five years, there was no credible alternative to this fragmentation that we have been witnessing.

LJ: Given his new role with full executive power, what are Rumen Radev’s core principles, who supports him, and what impact do you anticipate his leadership will have on the European Union?

MS: Rumen Radev as a president provoked some accusations of taking a pro-Russian stance. When the war started, he did say that sanctions against Russia are not effective. He did criticize the European Union, and he did question the financial and military aid to Ukraine. Who stands behind him? People who share similar opinions on geopolitics, but not only. Rumen Radev was the one who put forward the idea that Bulgaria was not ready to join the eurozone and put forward the idea of a referendum on joining the eurozone. Throughout these years as president, people around him who did not necessarily share his opinion would start to distance themselves. The people who started working in the beginning were not the people he ended up with in the beginning of the year when he left the presidency.

His behavior during the campaign was characterized much more by rhetoric. I often make a comparison between him and Giorgia Meloni in Italy when she was running in 2022. I am not talking about the content of their views, but about the approach. It is an increasing populist kind of narrative and criticism toward the European Union, something that citizens gladly hear as they are struggling with various problems and feeling insecure. When Meloni became prime minister, she did not deliver on those populist messages; on the contrary, she became very cooperative within the European Union and NATO.

Rumen Radev is very similar in this respect. He wanted to consolidate a large electorate and he did. He stole from the electorate of all other parties in the Bulgarian parliament. Starting from the far right, they lost two-thirds of their electorate to Rumen Radev. GERB, the party of Boyko Borisov, also suffered big defeats. The reformist, pro-European liberal coalition lost part of their electorate as well, but they gained new voters, so it evens out. He attracted an electorate that does not share a single profile. That was the purpose of him being more ambiguous yet critical.

The result is that he now has to address an electorate consisting of moderate pro-Russians, moderate pro-Europeans, and anti-European citizens. This will be the most difficult part of his job: how he will speak to all these people and satisfy as large a part of this electorate as possible. On the other hand, he has to build the party from scratch. You asked me about the people around him; they are not very popular in the public space and very little is known. He attracted some prominent sportsmen, for example, which contributed to a higher result. But there was some ambiguity in terms of the team behind him and in terms of the political program that united them. These are the immediate tasks of Rumen Radev following his own electoral strategy: first, how to quickly create a party from scratch and avoid the risks of such a process, and second, finding the common denominator for this heterogeneous electorate.

LJ: Why are comparisons between Rumen Radev and Viktor Orbán inaccurate, and how should we understand Radev’s stance toward Russia given Bulgaria’s traditional ties and the current geopolitical context?

MS: He was often compared to Orbán and framed as pro-Russian. He was not happy with being described as pro-Russian, but we must first follow the question of what it means to be pro-Russian today. If we go back to his statements, such as opposing aid to Ukraine and questioning the sanctions against Russia, we have to answer what it means to be pro-Russian in circumstances where Russia has attacked a sovereign state. This is very close to the Bulgarian coast; both Ukraine and Russia border the Black Sea. The repercussions are very close. In this environment, any such statements opposing the support for Ukraine can be helpful for Russia because by not supporting Ukraine, you are helping Russia.

LJ: Do you believe he will block European Union initiatives in the same manner as Viktor Orbán, or will they proceed?

MS: First, Viktor Orbán is gone. I do not believe that Rumen Radev would like to be the only one blocking anything within the European Union. Second, as he has a majority in the Bulgarian parliament – an unprecedented occurrence since 1997 – he will now seek external legitimacy. He is not a new face to European leaders or to NATO. He will seek recognition abroad, and to obtain this recognition, he will have to be cooperative. Third, there are no benefits for Bulgaria if it blocks initiatives in the European Union. Rumen Radev has a track record of rhetoric aimed at a domestic audience while taking concrete actions in Brussels. There was sometimes a discrepancy between those two.

In simple terms, at least in the short term, Rumen Radev does not have an interest in blocking anything. He reconfirmed that the future of Bulgaria is within the European Union and within NATO. As a former military pilot, he will perhaps see more value in NATO than in the European Union. He will want to work on Bulgaria increasing its defense capabilities; he knows how to do it and he has been vocal on this since he appeared on the Bulgarian political scene. To do this, he needs to work with his counterparts in the European Union and in NATO. There is no interest and there is no benefit in going against the majority of Bulgarians who are pro-European. Even though Bulgaria is often framed as relatively pro-Russian within the European Union, a large majority of Bulgarians feel part of the Euro-Atlantic community. He knows that, and he knows that the tangible benefits from these memberships are very important, specifically the European Union funds.

One of his first goals will be to unfreeze some of the European Union funds that were held due to a lack of progress in certain reforms, more precisely judicial reforms. It will be a good sign and a success story for him if he releases those funds, especially in an environment where crises are increasing and inflation is quite high. European Union funds are something that can unite this heterogeneous electorate. He will first focus on immediate tasks, such as the economic crisis, but his main focus is state capture. He capitalized on the anti-corruption protests from December and now he has to deliver on this. If he delivers on judicial reforms and the fight against corruption, this will also help him legitimize himself in the eyes of his European counterparts.

This podcast is produced by the European Liberal Forum in collaboration with the Movimento Liberal Social and the Fundacja Liberté!, with the financial support of the European Parliament. Neither the European Parliament nor the European Liberal Forum are responsible for the content or for any use that be made of.