In the space of three decades, the population of Bulgaria has shrunk by 1.5 million. The average life expectancy in the country is 71.4 years, as compared to 80 in the European countries. In practice this means that one whole Bulgarian village vanishes every month. Unless this demographic tendency is broken, before long, there will be a huge number of old-age pensioners living in the country, and a minority of people of working age. According to long-term forecasts, in 2050 the population of the country will have dwindled to 5.6 million from the current 6.5 million, National Statistical institute data show. 

The low birth rate, the aging population, the low quality of healthcare and emigration are among the main reasons why the demographic crisis has been deepening.

“The fact that we are poor has a significant impact,” comments Nastimir Ananiev, chairman of the parliamentary committee on regional policy. “There are more than 2 million active Bulgarians living abroad at the moment, inside the country the number of people of working age is 2.7 million, and there are 2 million pensioners. What we need to work on is to make the country attractive to Bulgarians abroad so they will return. Everyone wants to live a normal life, to feel European, but 15 years after we joined the EU, if you ask the people in the street, most are not very likely to say they are European.”

Though on its list of priorities, taking action to tackle the demographic problem is not on the agenda of the ruling coalition as yet, Nastimir Ananiev says:

“To focus on it there needs to be no ambient noise, but right now we have a war going on, inflation, an energy crisis,” Nastimir Ananiev goes on to say. “It is essential to develop a national strategy with specific steps for the next 20 years that will be supported by all parliamentary forces. But if we begin to follow these steps through, and then some years later the next government does something else - something we have seen happening for more than 30 years - then the strategy will simply not work.”

Vazrazhdane party MP Angel Georgiev comes from Europe’s poorest region – Northwestern Bulgaria – and he says he remembers Vidin as a much more populous city in his childhood. He says his party has a programme for tackling the demographic disaster.

“What we want to do is, like Greece which brought one million people back to the country in the 1990s with a package of economic measures, we want to do the same,” Angel Georgiev says. “We shall need massive assistance from the EU if we want to have such a package that will get the economy back on its feet so that Bulgarian emigrants will return. According to our programme, the people who do that will not pay taxes during the first 5 years, and if they start a business – 10 years. The northwest is a classic example of what lies ahead for the country if we continue to do nothing. Besides financial resources, if we want to cope with the demographic crisis, the government needs to demonstrate the will and the capacity to do so, but none of the governments so far have done so.”

The smallest party represented in parliament Vazrazhdane proposes the development of a concept for a facilitated procedure for acquiring Bulgarian citizenship for ethnic Bulgarians living in other countries, as well as the development of economic zones in the regions of the country that have been lagging behind which will help create new jobs in smaller towns.

A demographic study by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Regional demographic imbalances in Bulgaria – bodes the depopulation of the country in the coming 20 years. 

“The problem with demographic processes is that things may be happening with a certain intensity now, but in the years to come, due to the accumulation of problems connected with the aging population, these processes will have become more pronounced,” says Prof. Nadezhda Ilieva, one of the authors of the study. Our estimates are connected with the faster rate of deterioration of the demographic situation.”

However, Prof. Ilieva says the process is reversible, as there have been demographic crises in the world that have been much more dramatic than the crisis in Bulgaria. 

Interviews by Georgi Zhikov, BNR-Vidin

Editing by Diana Tsankova