Foreign relations of Bulgaria

Bulgaria has generally good foreign relations with its neighbours and has proved to be a constructive force in the region under socialist and democratic governments alike. Promoting regional stability, Bulgaria hosted a Southeast European Foreign Ministers meeting in July 1996, and an OSCE conference on Black Sea cooperation in November 1995. Bulgaria also participated in the 1996 South Balkan Defense Ministerial in Albania and it is active in the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative. Since the group's inception in 2015 Bulgaria has been a part of the Bucharest Nine, a subset of Eastern European NATO countries. The Republic of North Macedonia plays an important role in Bulgarian foreign and domestic policy due to historical, ethnic and cultural ties.

History

After the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, Bulgaria sought economic cooperative arrangements with Germany, Italy, France, Portugal, and Spain, as well as military cooperation with Romania, Greece, and Turkey. A start was made on easing tensions with its historical adversary Serbia.

Due to close historical, cultural, and economic ties, Bulgaria sought a mutually beneficial relationship with Russia, on which it largely depends for energy supplies.

Bulgaria's EU Association Agreement came into effect in 1994, and Bulgaria formally applied for full EU membership in December 1995. During the 1999 EU summit in Helsinki, the country was invited to start membership talks with the Union. On January 1, 2007, Bulgaria officially became a member of the European Union. In 1996, Bulgaria acceded to the Wassenaar Arrangement controlling exports of weapons and sensitive technology to countries of concern and also was admitted to the World Trade Organization. Bulgaria is a member of the Zangger Committee and the Nuclear Suppliers Group. After a period of equivocation under a socialist government, in March 1997 a UDF-led caretaker cabinet applied for full NATO membership, which became a reality in April 2004.

Bulgaria and the United States signed a Defense Cooperation Agreement in 2006 providing for military bases and training camps of the U.S. Army in Bulgaria, as part of the Pentagon's restructuring plan.

The HIV trial in Libya resulted in the release of Bulgarian nurses imprisoned by Muammar Gaddafi's government in Libya. French President Nicolas Sarkozy secured the release in exchange for several business deals.

In June 2010, media reports claimed that Bulgaria was considering closing a total of 30 of its diplomatic missions abroad. Currently, Bulgaria has 83 embassies, 6 permanent representations, 20 consular offices, and 2 diplomatic bureaus. The proposed closures were backed by Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, who described some of Bulgaria's embassies as useless. In November 2010, Bulgaria's Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov formally announced that his team proposed to close seven embassies as part of a restructuring and austerity plan.

In March 2012 the Borisov administration decided to discontinue its plans to build with the help of Rosatom and Atomstroyexport the Belene nuclear station near the River Danube. At the time, Bulgaria depended on Russia for 89% of its petrol, 100% of natural gas and all of the nuclear fuel needed for its twin-reactor Kozloduy nuclear station. In the subsequent lawsuit, the International Court of Arbitration at the International Chamber of Commerce in Geneva ruled against Bulgaria.

2014-2021

In August 2014 Bulgaria suspended its 930 km portion of the South Stream natural gas pipeline project with Gazprom until the project conforms to European Union law. In default of this project, Naftogaz and Ukraine stood to benefit. Gas was to be pumped to the Black Sea port of Varna before it travelled overland to the Serbian border and northeast from there to Hungary, Slovenia and Austria.

A Bulgarian weapons dealer named Emilian Gebrev was poisoned (along with his son and an employee) in Sofia in spring 2015 using a substance believed to be the nerve agent Novichok, and in 2020 three Russian nationals were charged in absentia. One of the three went by the name Sergei Fedotov, which is the alias of Denis Sergeev (GRU officer).

The Bucharest Nine (or B9 format) is an organization founded on 4 November 2015 in Bucharest, Romania, at the initiative of the President of Romania Klaus Iohannis and the President of Poland Andrzej Duda during a bilateral meeting between them. Its members are Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. Its apparition was mainly a result of a perceived aggressive attitude from Russia following the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and its posterior intervention in eastern Ukraine both in 2014. All members of the B9 were either part of the former Soviet Union (USSR) or the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact.

Rampant corruption has led as recently as June 2019 to repeated rejection of Bulgaria's attempts to join the Schengen Area.

In November 2020, Bulgaria vetoed the European Union's draft negotiating framework for North Macedonia's accession talks, thereby blocking the start of negotiation talks. Bulgarian officials cited longstanding disputes over history and language, and called on North Macedonia to acknowledge what they described as the Bulgarian roots of the Macedonian language and identity.

Bulgaria manufactures many types of Soviet-era ammunition, anti-tank missiles, and light arms, and has extensive trade ties with other recovering Soviet countries for this reason.

The TurkStream natural gas pipeline project seemed to excite quite a few journalists. The project's European landfall is Bulgaria. TurkStream started shipping gas to Bulgaria, Greece and North Macedonia on 1 January 2020, after the personal intervention of Vladimir Putin. One journalist ran his article under the headline "How Bulgaria gave Gazprom the keys to the Balkans".

In 2020, five Russian diplomats and the Russian military attaché were expelled on grounds that they were engaging in espionage. Together with the two expelled on account of the Iliev scandal, eight Russian diplomats were expelled over 18 months to April 2021.

2022-date

Prime Minister Kiril Petkov has introduced a political taboo on the use of Russian narratives, including the "special operation" label favoured by Vladimir Putin. Those who think otherwise so have to bear heavy political responsibility: the Bulgarian Minister of Defense, Stefan Yanev, was the first to be punished. He allowed himself to declare, following Putin, that it is not "war" in Ukraine but a "military operation". Petkov dismissed the minister on March 1, a scant week after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Petkov recalled his ambassador to Russia, after Russian ambassador to Bulgaria Eleonora Mitrofanova conducted herself abysmally in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

On 7 May 2022 the head of Bulgargaz, Ivan Topchiisky, announced that Bulgaria will be able to overcome its dependence on the Russian supplier Gazprom by the end of 2022. The demands of Gazprom to make payments for gas in rubles added fuel to the fire, and Sofia refused. Thus, Bulgaria turned out to be one of the two EU countries to which Russia cut off gas supplies, and this necessitated the urgent co-operation of EU Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen.

In early 2022, Petkov was sympathetic to Volodymyr Zelenskyy's repeated requests for military aid during his country's battle against the Russians but he faced the refusal of his coalition partner the Bulgarian Socialist Party (which is the successor to the Soviet-era Bulgarian Communist Party) and their leader Korneliya Ninova. On 4 May, Parliament approved the continuation of repairs to damaged Ukrainian military equipment, and will continue to support Ukraine's membership in the EU, as well as to the Ukrainian refugees from the war, who numbered more than 56,000 as of 7 June. Petkov noted Bulgaria's espousal of all sanctions against Russia, and would allow the use of the Port of Varna to transship goods that had been stifled by the Russian blockade of Odesa.

Bulgarias wish to see an end of Russian gas in the EU contributed to a decision to apply a high transit tax on gas being pumped through the country to Hungary and Serbia in October 2023, which caused an upset even though the tax would probably be paid by Gazprom, not Hungary or Serbia. In December, despite the European Commission agreeing that the law does not breach EU regulations, Bulgaria agreed to suspended the charge to avoid any issues during Bulgaria's pending Schengen Area application.