Few people believed in the first days of Prime Minister’s Boyko Borissov’s second cabinet that the frail coalition, pieced together so arduously, would survive or that it would have the capacity of stabilizing the country after two years of perturbations, much less that it would be able to carry through vital though extremely painful reforms for overcoming the political, social and economic crisis.

The balance sheet of the government’s first one hundred days seems positive but controversial. Social stability has been restored, most public institutions are no longer under constant fire by different social groups nor are they torn asunder by internal feuds. The government itself and the parliament are subject to strong criticism and accusations but their existence is not called in question. After a period when the country’s foreign policy was highly contradictory and ambiguous, Bulgaria is now back on the international arena as a stable and much more reliable partner and NATO and EU member. Or in a word, stabilization is a fact, though some may call it partial.

As to reforms, things are a bit more nuanced here, with a tentative balance between success and failure. It would be difficult to single out any social or economic sphere in Bulgaria that is not in dire need of change and streamlining. The economy is wilting, foreign investments are nowhere to be seen whatever the invitations to would-be investors, the budget deficit is going down but is still a problem, deflation is still a deterrent to businesses, domestic consumption and exports are on the brink. Not to mention the thundering fiasco of the South Stream gas pipeline project that was supposed to pass via Bulgaria which, justifiably or not, the government was counting on to enliven the economy and reduce unemployment.

Still, a start has been given to reforms. The reform that is most radical, most advanced and perhaps most important to Bulgarians is the reform in the public healthcare system. Minister Petar Moskov - ambitious, dynamic and with a high public approval rating - plans to transform the entire system and for the time being, it looks like he may succeed. However the reform in the pension system – a reform no less important – has run aground before it was even launched and, under public pressure, is now being revised. In the sphere of internal security too, people seem to have grasped the truth – that the police and law enforcement agencies can no longer function as they used to in the times of totalitarianism, spending huge amounts of money to no effect for the man in the street. Yet this truth seems not to have been grasped by the law enforcement agencies themselves, and it is no coincidence that the European Commission’s strongest criticisms are in the sphere of the judiciary. Nonetheless, Brussels placed its confidence in the government and resumed payments under European programmes previously shelved.

This is by far not a full list of the reforms that the government must put through, reforms that it has put on its agenda. There is dire need of change in power generation which has constantly been amassing debts, the reform in the Bulgarian State Railways company which though halted has only been postponed, so that railway transport may come to take its due place, a place that must be earned. Ten kilometers of new highways a year does not go a long way to meet modern road infrastructure requirements. Defence is in urgent need of modernization and rearmament. Education is still something people talk about in the future tense, spewing out onto the labour market young people who are badly educated and low-skilled… The problems are so many that even to mention them all would be next to impossible.

Yet the first 100 days of the second Borissov cabinet give cause for hope that at least some steps in the right direction are being taken.

English version: Milean Daynova