The week: The Bleak sea 🌊, Who's nominating the Bulgarian EU commissioner 🇧🇬💼, The train deal falls through 🚂❌

The Black Sea, which is almost a lake, will become something like a testing ground for climatologists who want to predict the future of ecosystems worldwide. Bulgarian fishermen, naturally, will be affected, but so will all other nations around. As much as 60% of Turkish fishing, for example, depends on the Black Sea.

Climate change will have effects far beyond tourism. Landslides, torrential rains, floods, and various other disasters are part of the changes we will see when the sea starts to warm up sharply.

This week, Bulgaria is hosting the high-level meeting of the IPCC - the international climate panel of scientists who will have to tell the world what to expect from the changing climate. The country received this meeting as compensation for the COP being held in Dubai. Those are the people who supposedly know what's happening.

Yet they don't, really. In an interview with Capital Weekly, the chief scientist of the IPCC warns that the changes are sharper than expected and the models are already in the air. Which means no one really knows where we are heading.

The only thing I can say, living in a city with regular summer temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius, is that it is unlikely to get any better. So what's needed are more finances for studying what is gonna happen around here, meaning we need to invest in science on the shore of the sea, but also in the cities. And then - more in mitigation. We're obviously past the point where we can stop anything that will happen. We better be prepared.

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Politics this week:

The letter from Ursula von der Leyen is already in the mailbox of the government and the countdown has begun: they have until the end of the month to deliver a name.

Peevski on the top table?

Now there is a big chance that the government which is going to nominate someone for the top table, will be PM Glavtchev's. Or, to put it in another way, judging by many of its decisions, it's only fair to say this is Delyan Peevski's government. Which means the Magnitsky-sanctioned member of Parliament and MRF leader will have a voice in whom Bulgaria is sending to sit in the EU government.

Case in point: internal enemies are cleansed

This clearly shows the influence of Peevski: both governors sided with MRF honorary chairman Ahmed Dogan in his clash with Peevski.

But wait

There is still time for a new caretaker government. Now that WCC-DB returned unfulfilled the mandate to form government within this Parlament, and prospects for another party to put together a cabinet are slim, new early elections are imminent - in late September or early October. Which means there is a strong chance that in August President Rumen Radev might appoint a new caretaker PM, if only this Parliament gives him some names to choose from.

Which brings us back to the Constitution

Economy:

Remember when we asked how hard can it be to buy new trains, if you have the money? Well, it turns out the Ministry of Transport are utterly unable to handle even this rather simple procurement. This week, the winner of the two big procedures for the delivery of new rolling stock worth almost a billion levs in total (500 mln euro) - Stadler Poland, withdrew from the process. The ministry just announced that the company "has put some very demanding terms on the table" which broke the deals.

We have no idea what demanding terms those can be, but the result is that we're still without a single new train two years after Bulgaria got 3 billion levs under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. Compare this to Romania, where almost 40 new trains are already running on schedule. Or don't, if it makes you feel bad. It should.

Figures:

200 mln levs

Have been raised by the finance ministry on the domestic debt market. This is the 4th issue of 3-year bonds, with bids placed at the auction totalling 344 millon levs.

4.4%

Will be the unemployment rate this year and it will keep going down, says the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB).

2.1%

Business:

The chocolate factory in the town of Svoge will be expanded with a new chocolate tablet molding line. The planned investment amounts to USD 40 million and it should be in place within two years, the company announced.

M&A

Energy:

The reason appears to be high consumption of Romania and Hungary, problems with cross-border flows and insufficient production in these countries.

Brussels:

#EU court again - Commission decides to refer Bulgaria to the Court of Justice of the European Union for failing to incorporate the European Accessibility Act into national law, to transpose the legislation on the right to information in criminal proceedings, and for restrictions of the temporary provision of social services. One more time, the country's political instability and incompetent administration take their toll.

#Lukoil - Hungary will block European Union refunds for member states that gave munitions to Ukraine until Kyiv allows the transit of Russian oil via a pipeline on Ukraine's territory, Hungarian foreign minister Péter Szijjártó announced on Tuesday. Hungary and Slovakia, who are both affected by the situation, asked the European Commission to mediate a consultation procedure with Ukraine on the matter.

Watch out for:

The newly elected head of the Justice Committee in the European Parliament will be a very interesting figure to observe. He took firmly the side of Ahmed Dogan in the war against MP Delyan Peevski within the MRF party, and turned from an apologizer for the Magnitsky-sanctioned Peevski to a staunch voice against him. He is also going to question the newly selected Bulgarian Commissioner, whoever that might be, and it will be interesting to see if that's going to be another Dogan-Peevski clash.

Nikolay Nenchev

The leader of BZNS party and former minister of defense failed to win an ambassadorial seat in Kyiv because of a last-minute intervention by President Rumen Radev. Radev claimed Nenchev "lacks the qualities and expertise" for the post. This is rich coming from Radev, who single handedly has run the foreign ministry for well over 4 years now. Nenchev might not be the prime example of a good choice for the job, but many of the President's men have also been less than spectacular.

Location

Where the local division of German automotive wiring system producer Leoni is closing its factory for auto-cables in which 1300 people work. The decision is motivated by the lack of personnel and the high inflation, the company said in a statement.

Date:

This year's annual meeting of Bulgarian Socialists on the Buzludzha Peak in the Balkan mountain range might produce some news. According to the head of the Socialists in Parliament, Borislav Gutsanov, the party will seek rapprochement with President Radev and some of the other leftist parties at the forum in an attempt to bring left forces together before the all but certain early general election in the autumn. Under the leadership of the now ousted Kornelia Ninova, the Socialist Party fell out with most of its potential partners to the left, as well as with President Radev, who was nominated for the post by Ninova.

Institution

Zen of the week:

Саркофаг - Sarcophagus

Is what appeared on the beach near Varna, in St Constantine and Helena resort, earlier this week. A retired police officer accidentally discovered what he believed is an ancient Roman sarcophagus on the beach and a subsequent check showed that the find did indeed have signs of an object of cultural value from the 1st of 2nd century A.D. Archeologists quickly deduced it had been brought from somewhere else. But why was it left on the beach?

Mystery solved when newsreaders with good memory realized they'd already seen the sarcophagus serving as a bar table in a nearby expansive drinking establishment. It was not only cut to fit, but also painted to make it look more modern, we guess?