Bulgaria Marks 15 Years Since Joining NATO

On 29 March 2004, Bulgaria became a full member of NATO. Bulgaria's accession to the Alliance is undergoing a continuous integration process that began in the 1990s. In 1990, Bulgaria accepted the invitation to establish diplomatic ties with NATO.

On February 14, 1994, our country signed the Framework Document and joined NATO's Partnership for Peace program. In March 1997, the government adopted a National Program for Preparation and Accession of Bulgaria to the North Atlantic Alliance and a Council of Ministers decree establishing a governmental mechanism for the coordination of efforts for preparation and accession to NATO - Interagency Committee for Integration into NATO.

In May 2000, our country joined the formation of the Vilnius Group as a process of political solidarity and cooperation between the candidate countries for NATO membership. Bulgaria receives an invitation to NATO membership on 22 November 2002 at the Prague summit.

On 18 March 2004, the National Assembly ratified the North Atlantic Treaty, and on March 29, 2004, along with six other countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia), became a full member of the Alliance. A few days later - on April 2, 2004 was the official ceremony at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels marking the accession of the seven new countries to the North Atlantic Treaty. The national flags of Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia were raised in alphabetical order. As a result, NATO's largest expansion was completed.

The accession of Bulgaria to NATO was one of the main priorities of our country's foreign policy in the 1990s. Active participation in the Partnership for Peace program contributed significantly to the readiness of the Bulgarian armed forces and structures for NATO membership. This strategic goal was reached on 29 March 2004.

The 15th anniversary of our membership in the Union is also a reason to take stock of the journey we have made, but also to what is the state of our army.

The State of Defense and Armed Forces report for 2017 says that the Bulgarian Armed Forces are in a state of difficulty and with increased risk of fulfilling their mission tasks stemming from the constitutional obligations to ensure the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of the country within the collective defense of NATO and the Common Security and Defense Policy of the EU.

Separate tasks on the Defense Mission and Mission "Support for International Peace and Security" are being implemented with limitations. The document states that this is due to the insufficient budget allocated for defense as a percentage of GDP, the growing incompleteness of personnel and the poor state of obsolete armaments and combat equipment. The report says that despite the efforts to recruit new and retained trained personnel, the problem of incompleteness with military personnel in the Ministry of Defense, the structures of direct subordination of the Minister of Defense and the Bulgarian Army (20%) continued to deepen. At the end of 2018, on December 28, the military ministry announced that in 2018 for the first time the number of military service arrivals was higher than the number of people leaving.

In order to fulfill our commitment to the decision of the Welsh Summit to increase defense spending to 2% of GDP, the Council of Ministers of Bulgaria approved a National Plan to increase defense spending to 2% of GDP by 2024.

Regarding the modernization, our country has three projects approved by the deputies. Project for investment cost for "Acquisition of basic combat equipment for construction of battalion battle groups of the composition of a mechanized brigade". The other two are the updated investment project "Acquisition of a multi-purpose modular patrol vessel for Navy" and "Acquisition of a new type of combat aircraft". At this stage, negotiations are under way with the United States government to acquire a new type of F-16 fighter. They are expected to end this summer.

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