Ambassador Irene Maria Plank about the priorities during her term of office, the migrant crisis and the Istanbul Convention

The Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany Irene Maria Plank handed her credentials in January this year. In her interview with Radio Bulgaria, her first with the BNR, she talks about the priorities of her term of office.

What are the priorities of the new ambassador of Germany?

“Bulgaria is in the EU together with us. This means we all live in this European home. Bulgaria occupies the apartment at the other end of the landing, and naturally we have a lot of things we have to discuss together,” Ambassador Plank says and adds: “The things we have in common from a European-political point of view in which we would like to support Bulgaria, is its membership of the Schengen Area and its accession to the Eurozone as soon as possible.”

Besides the priorities in the political sphere, Ambassador Plank highlights the promotion of economic cooperation between Bulgaria and Germany as a priority during her term of office.

“Germany and Bulgaria are members of NATO and I believe it is also an alliance within which we can come closer together,” Irene Plank says, and adds that the development of civil society in Bulgaria is one more priority because “it is also a priority for Germany’s foreign policy”.

Should Bulgaria receive more help from the EU in connection with the migrant crisis?

“Europe as a whole has to cope with the problems of migration, but for Bulgaria they are different than they are for Germany” and as we are all in Europe together “we have to work together to resolve them,” Ambassador Plank points out. “Securing the external European borders is definitely a very important point,” Ambassador Plank adds.  

Within the European Union there are different opinions on the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence which has come to be known as the Istanbul Convention. Bulgaria has not ratified it, and neither have countries like Hungary, Slovakia, Armenia and Lithuania. Germany holds a different view.

“Of course there can be different opinions within the EU,” Ambassador Plank says. “My first impression is that there had been a very heated debate about the Istanbul Convention here, to begin with I didn’t even recognize it in this debate.”

Ambassador Plank is adamant the Istanbul Convention is “a corner stone in European human rights protection”.

“It is all about preventing and combatting violence against women,” she says. “I recently saw domestic violence statistics from Bulgaria which show that one-third of all women aged 18 to 29 have at some point in their lives experienced violence – in their home, within their family, from their partners or other family members. That is not acceptable.”  

Germany ratified the Istanbul Convention in 2017. “In Germany the family has not fallen apart because of it, on the contrary: it is an instrument for its consolidation because it provides a legal basis,” the German ambassador says. The ratification was the reason why an entire infrastructure was created which, for example, helps women in cases of domestic violence, Ambassador Plank explains. But it also helps the men “unable to control their propensity for violence switch to a different behavior mode,” Irene Plank says.

In the words of the German ambassador there are many countries in the world where women are underrepresented and their participation in public life and their capacity to determine their own lives are still at a very low level, that is why “international women’s day is a good thing, reminding us how much we still need to do”.

Translated from German Wladimir Wladimirow

English version Milena Daynova