The Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the EU is coming to an end and time for an assessment of what has been achieved over the past six months is coming, too. In a series of articles during the week, we shall present the views of political analyst Youssef Dakak; of Ognian Zlatev, Head of the European Commission's Representation in Bulgaria, as well as a poll with opinions of Bulgarian citizens.

Youssef Dakak, a political scientist from the Institute for Right- Wing Policy, assesses the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the EU as very good. According to him, the foreign policy of the country is in a particularly active phase, which should be preserved after the end of June:

“The Bulgarian Presidency managed to refute claims by skeptics by being one of the most active European presidencies in recent years. It has achieved three great successes. One of them was that it restarted dialogue between Turkey and the EU. This was of key importance to Bulgaria in terms of migration pressure on our common border. The second big success was related to the topic of the Western Balkans. Bulgaria has managed to attract high-level attention on the future of these countries, as dialogue seemed frozen in recent years. Now we are talking again about providing a date for starting negotiations with Macedonia, which is a great progress. The third major success was reduction of telephone call prices between EU Member States and Western Balkan countries. This was announced by EU commissioner Mariya Gabriel and is extremely important for turning Europe into a common integrated system.”

After the summit in Sofia on May 17, it became clear that this year, a process for reducing roaming charges and mobile data roaming charges with Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo could be expected. This is a particularly important achievement for the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of EU when the inclusion of the Western Balkans is concerned. Success for the region are the agreement for good neighborly relations signed between Bulgaria and Macedonia and the agreement for new name of Macedonia, which settles the long-standing dispute between Skopje and Athens. However, full membership in the European Union still seems too far away for the western neighbors of Bulgaria, and they also need support from the countries holding the presidency - Austria, Romania and Finland. Currently, Austria has confirmed that integration of the Western Balkan countries will remain a priority at least until the end of 2018. YussefDakak considers this to be correct because:

“Austria is one of the countries that know the region best, as it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire for decades, and has interest in its European integration. Naturally, this should not happen at all costs because some countries do not meet membership criteria. Both Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia are examples of this, as Serbia continues to restrict to a considerable extent rights of the Bulgarian minority on its territory. There are many institutional problems, especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which does not seem to act like a single country. Serbia continues to make attempts to cause division through the so-called Republika Srpska. In addition to the problem with Bosnia and Herzegovina, our western neighbor must solve its problems with Kosovo.”

However, in order to be fully objective, we cannot remain indifferent to some of the weaknesses that Bulgaria showed during its presidency term. One of them, according to Yussef Dakak, is the insufficient resistance Bulgaria showed for the so-called "Mobility" package proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron. The political scientist believes that proposals in the package deepen the differences between EU regions and that these measures aim at increasing the popularity of Macron in France. Although Macron's move is understandable in his quest for a higher rating, it would have caused enormous damage to the European economy. In addition, some of the changes proposed violate two of the fundamental principles of the EU – free movement of people, goods, services and capital and competitiveness.

English: Alexander Markov