A bust of Atanas Burov was inaugurated in the European Parliament building in Brussels, and some space on the first floor of this institution was named after the Bulgarian financier, diplomat and politician. The event took place at the initiative of Bulgarian MEPs from EPP.

Atanas Burov is a financier, MP in ten parliaments, and a cabinet minister in four governments during some of the most turbulent years for Bulgaria. With the respect he commanded, his contacts and his sense of diplomacy, Burov managed to extract the country from the humiliating Peace Treaty of Neuilly (1919). He renegotiated the reparations payment plan – the reparations amounted to 680 million gold francs – and managed to halve the principal. He negotiated two very important loans for the stabilization of the Bulgarian Lev and the country’s economy. With this money he provided the refugees fleeing from Macedonia and Western Thrace to this country in the 1913-1923 period, with land and a roof over their heads.

In the years of World War 2, Burov also helped rescue the Bulgarian Jews by making use of his contacts with the ambassadors of Germany to Sofia – Herbert von Richthofen and Adolf-Heinz Beckerle, whom he convinced that the Bulgarian nation would never accept any discriminatory treatment of their fellow countrymen. After the communist coup in 1944 Burov was sentenced to one year of imprisonment by the so-called People’s Court. But even after he had served his sentence he was still persecuted, this time just for being Burov, and in 1950 was accused of plotting a coup d'état and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He died in 1954 in the prison in Pazardzhik.

Though only in brief outline, Atanas Burov’s biography sheds light on a life dedicated to the wellbeing and prosperity of his country. The Bulgarian diplomat also had concrete ideas connected with European unification:

“In articles he wrote as early as 1939, Burov predicted the creation of the EU because the European nations will forget their differences and will unite on an economic basis,” EPP MEP Andrey Kovatchev said. “To name this space in the European Parliament building in Brussels after him is to acknowledge the fact that Bulgaria too has had its statesmen with a democratic, European turn of mind, statesmen who have cherished the idea that the country must be part of the family of democratic European nations.”

“A defender of democracy and a strong opponent of totalitarian regimes. He dedicated his life to his country and will remain a key figure in European and Bulgarian history,” said European Parliament President Antonio Tajani at the official ceremony at which Atanas Burov became the first Bulgarian to have had space in this key European institution named after him.

As to the message this country conveys to the EU with this initiative, Bulgarian MEP Andrey Kovatchev said that Bulgaria, alongside its neighbours and friends from the other European nations, must continue the efforts to build a common European home, and that Burov was “a role model, someone who perfectly fits the idea of a man who has espoused a great many of the European values – liberty, democracy, supremacy of law.”

Proof of this are Atanas Burov’s words which have come down to us:

“We have to be European if we feel we need Europe. If we think we are all-powerful, if we feel we can kick, so to say, this help aside, that we can solve these problems all by ourselves – then we can be whatever we like – Asian, Balkan etc. But we would be hard put to find two decent people in Bulgaria who cherish the illusion that we can solve some problems on our own strength. Any one of our problems will be resolved by the consent of the European countries.  But to get their consent we need to take into account the psychology of these nations. We need to be right, by their conscience, that is why anything that lays us open to ridicule we must diligently avoid.”

English version Milena Daynova