Bulgaria's entry into the European Union was the best thing that could have happened to the ruling communist descendants. The forty five years of Russian domination led the country to a complete disaster. Because of the anarchy, lawlessness and corruption there are only Russian investments, but they are well measured. The Russian oligarchs are here to use the cheap labor of the unemployed Bulgarian people. Bulgarian property is purchased primarily on the Black Sea where Russian citizens are settled. Other small Russian entrepreneurs use Bulgarian market for an entry point in the European market. The Russian oil is sold in Bulgaria for prices much higher than the ones in the other European countries. The bottom line - poverty, despair, and uncertainty. Life buoy for this situation was the Bulgarian entry into the European family. The unemployed Bulgarians are now free to go out and clean toilets and collect garbage for salaries ten times higher than those in Bulgaria. That way they were able to send money to their starving relatives. This way the communist descendants are able to solve in a way the problem with the unemployment and, to calm the disgruntled citizens from lack of funds, yet to assist the economy with funds coming from abroad earned by the Bulgarians with hard work and deprivation. These are the "benefits" of the ordinary citizens from joining the big European family, but the benefits of the government are far beyond that.
The taxes for being in the European Union are paid by regular Bulgarian but the money coming back from the Structural Funds and Cohesion Fund are going right into the pockets of recent communist elite.
Let's start with the European program that was supposed to help people start their own business. What was the way? First the applicants had to apply and after that, sign up in a training course. Okay, let’s say that they will learn something useful. Then they have to sign up to another training course where they need to prepare their projects. During the training courses the participants are earning no money, and at the same time they need to pay their bills, and they are doing all that in the hope that they’ll be granted money to start their own businesses. It turns out that the approved applicants from the training courses will be 5,000 but the admitted to training are 20,000. There is no transparency at the end who will eventually receive the money for starting a business, nor what are the criteria by which projects will be evaluated and who will evaluate them. Also the applicants will never know why their projects are not approved and why they lost all that time. Actually all of them wasted their time but who got the money?
The companies who were supposed to “train” the applicants received 1200 levs for each trainee from the Euro funds. Can you guess who owns these companies? You don’t believe that they are owned by ordinary Bulgarians, right? Can you also guess who won the money for starting a business? In any case they were not from the ones who wasted their time to get “trained” for two months.
There are other similar programs that are suggested by the Bulgarian labor department. Probably every second unemployed Bulgarian was lied to, to go to these “free” courses. People apply to these training courses in a hope that they’ll find a job, but actually they are used as tool by people connected to the communist elite to steal money from the European funds.
Let’s take a look at the Bulgarian agriculture. All beneficiaries of European subsidies are somewhere in the chain of political and oligarchic circles. There are no ordinary people who received money from these programs. The truth is that if you're not anywhere in the chain, you don’t have access to information. The ordinary Bulgarians who have some land don’t know anything about the opportunities provided by the European programs. People in villages plow their land because otherwise will starve to death, others sell it for pennies, and some leave it barren. They don’t have other options because the information never reaches them. The information is given to certain people or to those who can pay. The first thing that Bulgarian politicians do when they enter the parliament is to become consultants and start selling information. Information should be free and available to everyone, but do not forget that we are in Bulgaria. There are also some con artists who hold positions in local authorities and administration, and have access to information. They appropriate the land of the people who can’t afford to take care of it and are getting Euro subsidies for other people’s land. Bulgarian anarchic system allows this kind of schemes.
Another important sector in Bulgaria is the construction business. Who are the "businessmen" in this industry? Some are former pub singers without education but closely related to people from the "red elite". These uneducated businessmen enjoy a thriving business, thanks to their close relationship with the government. They get government contracts without competition and transparency. They do it by shaking hands in the dark with the appropriate politicians and with money under the table.
Another ridiculous project created by Bulgarian politicians was the one which was supposed to bring the Bulgarian emigrants back to Bulgaria by traveling around the world with European money and talking to the Bulgarian emigrants to go back to their homeland.
This is how Bulgaria looks like in the eyes of the regular Bulgarian. The EU saved the communist criminals from peoples rage. EU launders their money and accepts them as equals. I often ask myself if ever there is going to be justice for these doomed Bulgarians.
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