Bulgaria Should Aim for Joining Club of Rich Nations – Ex Foreign Minister

Former Bulgarian Foreign Minister and Atlantic Club President Solomon Passy, photo by BGNES

Bulgaria's long-term goal should be its accession to the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) and even the G20 club of rich countries, according to former Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy.

Passy spoke during a discussion on the fifth anniversary of Bulgaria's accession to the EU organized by the Economic Policy Institute with the support of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES).

Former socialist MEP Atanas Paparizov sided with the idea, adding that this had to be accompanied by a strategy for catch-up economic growth.

Monica Panayotova, Chair of the parliamentary committee on EU Affairs, argued that the focus ought to be shifted away from swift measures to long-term policy-making.

The former Foreign Minister and President of the Atlantic Club of Bulgaria referred to the GERB government as the most fortunate one in the past 20 years because it was the first that was not engaged in accession talks with the EU and therefore had a huge potential to set new goals in a 15 to 20-year perspective.

Elaborating on the idea, he suggested that Bulgaria should aim for accession to the club of rich nations because the mere talks will make it an affluent country.

Apart from that, a side benefit of the process will be the introduction of new standards that will push the country forward, according to the Atlantic Club President.

He warned, however, that Bulgaria would have to pay the political price of the goal because its achievement would require unpopular measures, among others.

According to Passy, who pioneered the idea for the universal cell phone charger, Bulgaria could play a leading role in the implementation of the EU ICT standardisation policy.

He explained that this would lead to millions of tons in less garbage and carbon emissions and trillions in saved Euro.

He further noted that Bulgaria could play a leading role in EU's relations with third world countries like Mongolia, Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea and even CapeVerde.

In his words, Bulgaria could use the good relations it built with these countries during communist times.

According to Passy, Bulgaria could profit from the aid allocated by the EU for the development of third world countries, for instance by granting scholarships to foreign students who would like to come here to study.

"Although the Euro currency does not seem stable at all now, Bulgaria must not forget its eurozone accession priority," Atanas Paparizov from the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) said, adding that the country should pursue eurozone membership by 2015.

In the words of Monica Panayotova, who refused to commit to a specific date, Bulgaria aims to fulfill the Maastricht criteria and join the eurozone.

"After the decision of Standard & Poor's to downgrade the credit rating of nine countries, Europe has been moving forward on four speeds, Bulgaria being somewhere between third and fourth," Paparizov stated.

In his opinion, this puts Bulgaria in a very precarious situation, which makes it all the more necessary to works towards eurozone accession, however unstable the entity may appear nowadays.

To illustrate his point, Paparizov said that as a eurozone member state Bulgaria would be able to seek much better interest rates at the bond emission for refinancing the debt.

In the beginning of 2013, Bulgaria is to pay around BGN 2.5 B on the debt restructuring deal sealed during the government of former Tsar Simeon Saxe-Coburg.

According to Monica Panayotova, the challenges before Bulgaria in 2012 will be the accession to the Schengen area and the lifting of the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM) on Bulgaria's progress in judicial reform, the fight against corruption and the fight against organised crime.

She outlined the debates on the multiannual financial framework in the EU as a short-term priority.

Panayotova emphasized that Bulgaria will continue to press for the introduction of a mechanism for awarding excellent performers.

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