The week: The next star on the Bulgarian map

Dimitar Nikolov set out to change that.

The Burgas mayor, who's now in his fifth mandate, is a unique figure on the Bulgarian political scene. He's managed to stay out of major scandals, kept good relations with his political master Boyko Borissov, yet refused to become a national figure, is respected by Burgas's residents and what is more - has worked tirelessly to bring good ideas to his city.

Burgas had the first rent-a-bike scheme in Bulgaria, the first e-transport, it renovated its sea garden and green spaces. It is way ahead of Plovdiv in working on its light-rail system and has very good public transportation. Mind you, it started from a heavily handicapped position: Burgas lacked the necessary educational and healthcare infrastructure to compete with Varna and Plovdiv and this is still the case. Yet Nikolov announced the first project for a children's hospital (under construction) and is currently planning to build a huge student campus on the seaside.

Now he's added another idea. This week Burgas announced it's running for European Capital of Culture in 2032 and is creating a foundation for that purpose. He's brought in talent: we hear the team that ran "Plovdiv 2019" is going to work on that. This is a good omen.

What Burgas needs, most of all, is recognition beyond national borders, reputation and human capital. To attract talent, it needs to shine - not only locally, but internationally. And at present, Nikolov seems to be one of the very few mayors in Bulgaria, who understands that. He's taking the well-trodden path of Plovdiv because Capital of Culture is an overlooked opportunity for cities in the East to brand themselves internationally. It might not be successful, but the process itself will lead to structural changes which will help Burgas in the long run.

I can only wish them luck.

Politics this week:

This week in Parliament was marked primarily by ugly debates - and even physical altercations - surrounding the attempt by MRF-New Beginning and Vazrazhdane to pass their respective proposed bills for the creation of a parliamentary committee to investigate the network of influence created by George Soros and his son, Alexander, in Bulgaria, and to pass a "foreign agent" registration act. Talk about the new soft power of the Trump/Musk administration.

Anyway, both proposals failed to pass (although it is important to note that the anti-Soros one gathered significantly more support from almost all parties), but contributed to the toxic environment for media and NGO workers from the last few weeks.

What was rather surprising was that GERB's Boyko Borissov - who rarely openly picks a fight with anyone - decided to jump on the bandwagon, claiming that journalists received higher salaries than MPs and ministers and the media were better funded than the parties during one of his regular rants in parliament. He then argued that media grants need to be stopped. Funny when your own party has given close to 60 million in grants to TV stations during its last term in power - and that's only official funding. We all know well that unofficial support for friendly media has never been the object of Borissov's criticism.

Petyo the who?

The Ministry of Interior has no information about documents allegedly in the archive of former investigator and influence peddler in the judiciary Petyo "The Euro" Petrov. This was revealed during a hearing in parliament, at which the Deputy Interior Minister Lyubomir Yosifov answered questions alongside the National Security Agency DANS. Petrov, who became infamous over his participation in the Eight Dwarves scheme and the killing of Martin "the Notary" Bozhanov, has been unsuccessfully sought by police for over a year now.

"I have no such information and cannot give an answer to this question."

This is how Yosifov responded to an inquiry about Petrov's record. Last week, the civic movement Boets announced that they had received documents collected over the years by the former investigator. Among the papers are secret materials, including wiretaps, as well as indictments and reports from the Interior Ministry. However, it was gleaned from the heads of the law enforcement agency that these documents did not reach them at all throughout the week concerned, neither did anyone make an effort to request them.

Economy:

The state made commitments totaling 4.068 billion levs in expenditure last year, which it has not paid and which will be transferred to Budget 2025. This emerged at a hearing of Finance Minister Temenuzhka Petkova before MPs on 6 February. The information comes less than a week after GERB leader Boyko Borissov cast doubt on figures for the 3% of GDP deficit achieved in 2024 and ordered the Finance Ministry to carry out a review of commitments made but not paid, which the department launched immediately. The finance ministry's sudden discovery of old commitments and then bringing them into the public domain seems strange, especially since it already drafted a budget less than two months ago and should have most of this information at its disposal.

Figures:

The 8% increase in profits accumulated by banks in 2024 has mainly been due to the increased loan portfolios.

14 km

The construction of Hemus highway continues, as the new regional minister Ivan Ivanov has signed a construction permit for nearly 14 km of the motorway, despite claims by several ministries and institutions that until now the road has been constructed illegally.

Business:

In mid-January, Bulgaria-based myPOS announced that it has acquired Toporder, a French company for POS software and digitized sales management solutions. The fintech company did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.

AI

The AI startup founded by Bulgarian institute INSAIT and ETH Zurich, has raised USD 3 million in seed funding to create software development tools that can perform autonomous application maintenance. The funding round was led by European venture capital firm Northzone, and was joined by angel investors from DeepMind, Fleet, Sequoia Scouts, Snyk and Spotify.

Manufacturing

The dessert company owned by Mavitan Chiftich and Valentin Strekalovsky will expand by building a new factory for protein bars for about 40 million levs with a loan from Unicredit Bulbank, partially guaranteed by the EBRD.

Energy:

One of the key state-owned energy companies in the country, Bulgargaz, is on the verge of bankruptcy. As of the third quarter of this year, the company reported a loss of 187 million levs (compared to a loss of 83.7 million levs in the same period of the previous year), negative equity and a declining market share, the company's interim financial report shows. It states that the loss is mainly due to unused capacity costs (as is the case with the Botas contract) and natural gas impairment losses. Bulgargaz' equity was negative, -61 million levs compared to 125.5 million levs a year earlier. At the same time, revenues declined by almost 50% - for the period the company realized revenues of 1.1 billion levs vs. 1.9 billion levs for the first nine months of 2023, mainly due to lower volumes sold compared to the previous year.

Watch out for:

The ex-GERB functionaire and small-town lawyer who ended up being elected to the Constitutional Court, is now flying even higher. She's appointed as Bulgaria's representative at the Venice commission - the advisory body of the Council of Europe for experts in constitutional law. Seems she's bringing quite the talent.

Anton Zingarevich

The mysterious boss of Botev Plovdiv who has been banned from entering Bulgaria for 10 years, convened a press conference to explain he has no idea why. He also claimed that all the accusations were false. There is no money laundering through NEXO or other crypto companies and Botev is financially stable, said Zingarevich, whom we've been trying unsuccessfully to interview for ages.

Location:

After witnessing the mindblowing first weeks of the new administration and especially his 19th century idea of moving 1.5 mln. Palestinians out of Gaza to "develop it" and turn it into some sort of Florida on the Mediterranean, here's another tip we can give. There is a huge complex on the Bulgarian Black Sea, near Burgas. Bulgarians know it by the name "Saray" or the Palace of Ahmed Dogan. It is now in the hands of Magnitsky-sanctioned Delyan Peevski, who wrestled it out.

So why not give it to Trump? Peevski will earn his way out of Magnitsky, Trump will get his new hotel, Burgas will get world fame, and Russians will not dare set foot there. It's a win-win situation.

You may find this risible but this is a scheme no crazier than the one proposed for Gaza.

Institutions:

Less than a month after the new majority took the reins, it started to adopt the procedures for the election of members of the regulatory and control bodies, which are nominated by the National Assembly. Last week, the energy committee in Parliament adopted the rules for the election of the chairman and two members of the Energy and Water Regulatory Commission (KEVR), and this week the procedures for the election of chairmen and members of 15 other different bodies, most of them very important - the Court of Audit, the sub-governor of the BNB, the Financial Supervision Commission (FSC), the Commission for Protection of Competition (CPC) and a dozen others.

Word of the week:

Botox

Or Botolinum Toxin, as all talking heads on TV love to call it to sound more sophisticated, has been the word of the week in Bulgaria. The reason is that a rather toxic sample of the toxin sent 8 women to Pirogov hospital - some even in a life-threatening condition, causing a big public debate on its safe use. It turned out that all Pirogov patients were clients of the same fake dermatologist, Arina Osipova - Goodz (who promoted herself as Dr Goodz on Instagram), who was offering her services at 50% discount compared to market prices and apparently was not very good at keeping her aesthetic product in the right conditions.