One may say that as of several days Bulgaria has a party which has in fact started its campaign on EU elections 2019 – the governing GERB party. At a joint forum under the motto Europe Begins in Your Village / City / Region, GERB and the European People’s Party presented in the end of last week an initiative for a series of dialogues of the EPP at a local level across all EU member-states.

The goal of the dialogue (i.e. the campaign) is trust to be restored, increasing commitment to the EU, at the same time allowing people from the different European cities and regions to express their opinion on Europe prior to the 2019 EP elections. Chair of GERB’s parliamentary floor Tsvetan Tsvetanov made it clear that within that dialogue in Bulgaria cohesion policy would be among the most discussed issues. The thesis of the governing coalition will be that within the old financial program period cohesion policy allowed the Bulgarian local authorities to apply for European funding of projects worth EUR 3.3 bln., thus transforming the beneficiary municipalities in a most positive manner. Tsvetanov also said in advance that during the campaign GERB would plead for the overcoming of populism. This speech and others during the forum came to prompt that the party would actively base its campaign on the successes within its current rule, especially in the sphere of education. The other thing to be quoted repeatedly will be the successes of the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the EU in regard to the priorities for integration of the Western Balkans and for the reforming of migration policy.

However, the new episode of confrontation between GERB and its major opponent – the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), caused by a catty statement of President of the European People's Party Joseph Daul was perhaps the thing that attracted the strongest attention. It was said in front of GERB mayors and municipal councils’ chairs from all over the country, elected with the GERB lists. According to Daul the Bulgarian socialists haven’t existed ever since Bulgaria has taken over the Council of EU Presidency, because Boyko Borissov is currently the most successful ruler in Europe and the only way that the socialists could display themselves to the world is by talking about him. Outraged by this statement, BSP leader Kornelia Ninova replied that it was totally inadmissible, separating the Bulgarian society and showing disrespect to some 1 million Bulgarians who had supported the socialist party at the last polls. By stating in a sarcastic manner that the socialists could envy GERB for a Bulgaria having been the poorest and most corrupted European state for eight years now under the skilled rule of Mr. Daul’s friend Boyko Borrisov, Ninova in fact unveiled the BSP campaign for the EU elections 2019 with the same excessively sharp and aggressive tone.

Those outbursts of hostility between the two major political opponents in this country – GERB and BSP, observed at the start of the European elections 2019 campaign will most likely be transferred into the campaign for over a year ahead. The tone might even get sharper in regard to the will for early elections in Bulgaria even in 2018. The eventual emerging of such an event remains really uncertain and more clarity on this hypothesis might be expected after the end of the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the EU in mid-2018.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev