An angry Facebook wave is rising again that Greece wants a long-term agreement on the water of the Arda River. Let me give a few explanations for those who grab the banners to defend the national interest. I was in charge of the commission that prepared the Bulgarian position on the issue of Arda in 2023-24, recalls on "Facebook" former Acting Minister of Ecology Julian Popov.
1. Never during the 60-year period of the reparations agreement between Bulgaria and Greece has Bulgaria released more water from the Arda to Greece than its natural outflow. Not a single year. Despite the fact that before 1989 Bulgaria irrigated 25 times (!) more land than it irrigates now, and our population was close to 3 million more.
2. Hourly and seasonal control is subject to an additional agreement, for which Bulgaria is currently being paid.
3. The possible lower river flow is naturally included in every agreement, including the 1964 agreement, so in extreme cases, Bulgarian interests are fully protected.
4. The Arda flow has absolutely nothing to do with the water regime in Pleven and elsewhere, a phenomenon that is almost entirely due to poor management and poor investment policy.
5. Every agreement is at least bilateral and it depends on us how skillfully we could negotiate it. All real concerns, conditions, climate scenarios and variations, the connection between the river flow and our energy system, can be included in a future agreement without any problems. The Greek side knows and accepts this simple fact.
The pseudo-nationalist hype of the case "we give our rivers to the Greeks, but we have no water" is completely unfounded, deeply harmful, no matter how you look at it, and is driven mainly by a lust for attention, incompetence or hybrid undertones (to use a favorite word of Zahari Stoyanov).