Bulgaria is a country of 6.4m people in south-eastern Europe. It joined the euro on January 1st 2026, replacing its old currency, the lev. Its average monthly wage is about €1,300.
Bulgaria is the EU's poorest member but has been growing briskly: GDP expanded by 3.4% in 2024. Unemployment is at 3.5% and state debt amounts to just 26% of GDP, the third-lowest in the European Union.
Bulgaria has long oscillated between oligarchic machine politics and stumbling efforts at reform. It held eight elections in five years between 2021 and 2026. The country's dominant political force is GERB, an ideologically colourless party of power founded by Boyko Borisov, a three-time prime minister. GERB has presided over widespread corruption, the loss of independence for the judiciary and the political capture of most news media. Rosen Zhelyazkov of GERB served as prime minister until he was forced to resign on December 11th 2025 after an estimated 100,000 protesters—an impressive number for such a small country—packed the square in front of the National Assembly in Sofia, the capital. On May 8th 2026 Rumen Radev, who had been the largely ceremonial president since 2017, was sworn in as prime minister after his Progressive Bulgaria party won nearly 45% of the vote in late April. Mr Radev campaigned on dismantling Bulgaria's "oligarchic model of governance" and is the first prime minister in decades with an outright majority in parliament. Bulgaria has the worst corruption ranking in the EU according to Transparency International and the bloc's highest income inequality. On May 11th 2026 his government proposed "fair-price" benchmarks for consumer goods, forcing retailers to justify price increases or face fines. Mr Radev wants to increase imports of Russian fossil fuels (which the EU wants to end by 2027) and argues Europe should stop selling arms to Ukraine. Bulgarian defence firms have boomed since the war began, selling Soviet-style munitions to Ukraine; Rheinmetall, a German armsmaker, is planning a €1bn ($1.2bn) shell factory in Bulgaria, financed partly by an EU scheme. Mr Radev is a graduate of an American air-force fighter-pilot programme.
The other big player in machine politics is Delyan Peevski, an oligarch under sanctions from both the American and British governments. He has taken over the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (New Beginning), originally a party representing the country's ethnic Turkish minority, and become the country's biggest power broker.
We Continue the Change (PP) is a reformist party led by two Harvard-educated economists, Kiril Petkov and Asen Vasilev. PP formed a short-lived government in 2021 but its coalition partners proved unreliable.
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