The annual report of the State Agency for National Security(SANS) for 2017 was made public this week. The media mostly highlight the conclusion that the intelligence services of various countries in the region have continued to actively pursue their foreign policy doctrines and strategic interests, and that includes attempts to obtain sensitive and classified information regarding the processes taking place in the social, political, economic and military sphere in Bulgaria.

The positions, intentions and activity of Bulgaria and of its allies in the Euro-Atlantic spheres of foreign policy, security policy and defence planning and cooperation have been a target of sustained interest. But there has been particular interest in the preparations for and the process of Bulgaria’s Presidency of the Council of the EU over the first six months of the year.

In 2017 there has been no intel of any terrorist activity, planned or carried through, inside Bulgaria, or of any planned attacks against Bulgarian citizens abroad, or of any terrorist structures on the territory of Bulgaria. Nonetheless, the SANS report reads that other countries’ sites in Bulgaria, as well as Bulgarian nationals and Bulgarian sites abroad continue to be potential terrorist targets. For complicity to terrorist activity, 31 individuals have had their right of residence rescinded, or have been expelled from the country, or banned from entering Bulgaria. Far right, far left and anarchist groups and organizations in the country do not carry any real political weight, nor do they have public support, and for this reason the risk to national security from their activities is low.

In 2017 the migratory pressure on Bulgaria dropped by 84 percent compared to 2016, nevertheless, the country is still transit territory for migration towards Western Europe. In its annual report SANS writes that high-level corruption remains a significant political, economic and social problem. The sectors susceptible to corruption most are those with a considerable material resource, sectors in which procedures for the award of public service contracts are not transparent and sectors in which there are violations and weaknesses in exercising control and licensing functions. Corruption crimes have been thwarted, committed by employees of the National Customs Agency and the Public Financial Inspection Agency.

Charges have been brought against 34 individuals (including one cabinet minister and one deputy minister, one minister from a caretaker cabinet, the director of a specialized hospital, the CEO of the National Palace of Culture congress centre). To counter this phenomenon, at the beginning of 2018, a single authority was set up – the Committee for Combating Corruption and for Illegal Asset Forfeiture.

Edited by Stoimen Pavlov

English version: Milena Daynova