When parliament voted the national budget for 2019 at first reading a few days ago, Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said that Bulgaria had never been in better shape. If we are to believe the macroeconomic indicators like budget deficit, inflation, government debt, nominal wage growth, unemployment rate etc., the prime minister’s take on the situation in the country may be correct. That is why there are people who find it so hard to comprehend why there is a wave of protests sweeping across the country day after day, with disgruntled citizens blocking practically every major city, public road and highway like clockwork. The protests were said to have been organized spontaneously on social networks, though they did receive the support of the left-wing opposition.

The chief demands the protestors raise are economic, with a political undertaste. To put it in broad strokes, Bulgarians refuse to continue to be the worst-paid citizens of the European Union, with living standards amounting to 52 percent of the EU average, and are angry at the avalanche of rising prices in recent months, which bode no well for citizens in the immediate future, especially through the coming winter. Because the rise in prices is most tangible with fuels, the prices of which follow the ups and downs on the international market, while salaries and incomes cannot ensure a financial comfort that is typical of the advanced European countries. The prices of electricity, gas, motor fuels have all gone up. They are still the cheapest in the EU, but that is cold comfort for Bulgarians, half a million of whom have to make do on a minimum salary of 260 euro a month. Not to mention retirees, whose average pension is well below 200 euro a month.

Even the announced 10 percent rise in salaries in public administration as of 1 January, or the 5.7 percent increase in all old-age pensions as of 1 July, can do nothing to appease the anger of the protesting Bulgarians. The tangible past raise and the upcoming new raise in the salaries of teachers has done nothing to mitigate their wrath either.  “All we want is a decent life, and not to be seen as the poor relations of Europe,” the protestors are saying, against the background of a national economy that is actually doing well. And they find the arrogant, patronizing statements high-ranking officials from the ruling GERB party have been making – that it is within everyone’s rights to protest – even more infuriating. And all this while prices keep on rising, fueling inflation, which is nearing 4 percent and is eating away at consumers’ incomes. Second hand car taxes went up, with 90 percent of Bulgarians driving such cars, compulsory motor third-party liability insurance is going up soon as well. Meanwhile most consumer prices have started creeping up too, under the effect of the rise in energy prices. The drastic rise in central heating prices is yet to hit the public full in the face.

Next year, local elections will be taking place in Bulgaria along with the elections for European Parliament. If prices have continued to rise, and the effect of the forthcoming increase in incomes has been proven to be insufficient for a tangible improvement in living standards, the ruling coalition may be severely shaken. It should not be forgotten that PM Borissov has bitter experience from just such a situation – the time when his first government fell in 2013 as a result of sweeping anger over the rise in the price of electricity. We now have a third Borissov cabinet that never seems to tire of saying that it has every intention of finishing off its full term of office, and that one of the pillars in its programme is to raise the incomes of the population.

Whether it will succeed is yet to be seen, but Bulgarians are getting angrier and angrier that they, personally, gain absolutely nothing from the country’s otherwise admirable macroeconomic indicators.

English version: Milena Daynova