Caspian Energy (CE): Your Excellency, Bulgaria has been an EU member for over 7 years, what are the advantages and disadvantages of the EU membership for Bulgaria? 

Plamen Oresharski, Prime Minister, the Republic of Bulgaria: Bulgaria’s EU membership has been supported by the vast majority of Bulgarian citizens. Even in the current period which is hard for the European Union, Bulgaria is one of the Member States where support for the integration processes is highest.

The advantages that Bulgaria enjoys definitively dominate over the disadvantages. The adoption of European standards in socio-economic sectors, the access to the European countries’ markets, the free movement of people and the opportunities to study and work in any European country, the promotion of faster convergence of standards by the Union facilities – the structural and agricultural funds – all these elements offer apparent and positive prospects for my country’s development.

Sometime opinions are voiced of how EU membership was detrimental to our country’s economy which could not resist the pressure of competition in an environment of a fully liberalized market. I have never agreed with such views as they presuppose an isolated (closed) national economy which resorts to artificial levers to gear up inefficient sectors of the economy.