The ECC in Bulgaria

29 March 2007

Bulgaria joined the European Citizens’ Consultations upon accession to the EU on January 1, 2007. That is why there were no Bulgarian participants at the ECC Agenda setting event in October 2006. The National Citizens’ Consultation in Bulgaria took place on February 10-11 2007 in Sofia. The event was organized by the Centre for Liberal Strategies and the Alpha Research Agency. The CLS and Alpha Research organized back in 2003 the first deliberative poll in Central and Eastern Europe on organized crime. At present, they are in the final stage of the second deliberative poll in Bulgaria on the situation of the Roma minority (April 13-15 2007). The deliberative dimension of the ECC initiative was of special interest for the organizers.

65 participants with just six weeks of experience as EU citizens discussed for two days the three topics agreed upon by 200 citizens from the EU 25 back in 2006: Energy & Environment; Family & Social Welfare; EU’s Global Role & Immigration.

Any assessment of the event – both as a process and as an outcome - has to take into account the specific Bulgarian context. Bulgaria did apply for EU membership in December 1995 but membership in the EU has been a top political priority from the very beginning of the transition to a pluralistic democracy and market economy. Support for membership has been very high throughout the whole period of preparation for accession at levels between 70 and 80 percent. Throughout the whole period the main concern has been whether and when Bulgaria could join the EU rather than the impact of membership itself. In the last two years before accession there was some discussion about the necessity to organize a referendum – partly as a means to facilitate debate – but the Constitution and the high popular support didn’t make the referendum a must. Thus, there was no referendum and no real debate about membership and the EU. Quite few issues dominated the EU debate in Bulgaria: in the late nineties it was the visa issue (visas for Bulgarian citizens traveling to EU member states were abolished as late as April 2001) and the early closure of Units 1-4 of the Nuclear Power Plant Kozloduy (agreement on the dates for early closure was a precondition for the start of the accession negotiations in 2000 but 80 % of the Bulgarians continue to be against this agreement). One further issue has been the fact that Bulgaria is much poorer than the EU average – a fact that was supposed to foster both high expectations with regard to membership (fast improvement) and fears (second class membership).

Against this background, the following elements of the Bulgarian ECC are especially important:

• Participants had no problem to embrace the rather long-term perspective of 2020 (required by the ECC methodology). Contrary to what one might expect – that Bulgarians would be more eager to concentrate on their today’s problems – they did show readiness to adopt a long-term vision.
• Lacking the experience of indebt discussions, the Bulgarian participants highly appreciated the possibility to discuss policy issues on the basis of background information on the EU and with the assistance of qualified facilitators and resource persons. A strong sense of ownership did emerge in the group and plenary sessions the final result being that all 65 participants did fully support the elaborated final visions on EU’s global role & Immigration and on Family & Social Welfare. Furthermore, with regard to Energy & Environment the vision was fully supported by 64 and only partly – by 1. This overwhelming support and the reasons behind it should be carefully analyzed. There is no doubt that this is a support for the process of consultations as such. However, as regards the results, the visions themselves, one should be more careful and consider that without the strong sense of ownership developed during the consultations, such an amazing consensus wouldn’t be possible. (A comparison to the overwhelming consensus achieved by the Convention on the Future of Europe comes immediately into mind).
• With regard to the topic Energy & Environment, there was no surprise that the Bulgarian ECC participants did include into their vision for 2020 “ safe, efficient and economically viable nuclear power stations” but there were also many positive surprises: clean environment turned out to be a top priority; Kozloduy didn’t emerge to be such a sensitive issue within the long-term vision and people were ready to consider other options for sustaining reasonable energy prices beyond the nuclear option that is presented as an absolute guarantee for lower prices.
• With regard to EU’s global role & Immigration, the challenge for the participants was to stop considering themselves as potential migrants and to start imagining the problems Bulgaria might face as a target country of migration. Participants did show a high tolerance against potential migrants, partly motivated by the accumulated negative experience of Bulgarian migrants in EU member states during the period of pre-accession.
• With regard to Family & Social Welfare, it was a good feeling to experience that children matter most and that contrary to the alleged expectations for immediate higher living standards after accession Bulgarians do make a realistic assessment of the situation and do understand that social policy remains a domain of national responsibility.

Further details about the Bulgarian ECC can be obtained at: http://www.european-citizens-consultations.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/ECC_BG_National_Perspectives.pdf

Antoinette Primatarova, Centre for Liberal Strategies, Bulgaria