Some of the most appetizing and strategically important sites in Bulgaria can be nationalized in an opaque manner. What is the state selling and at what price? It is clear who will lose, but we need to learn the names of the winners.
"Shops for the people" are not there yet, but the state swindler has opened - on the counter are state-owned properties at people's prices, but only for the “right“ customers. "The swindlers" they will sell them like the scarce goods under socialism, only for “our“.
Dark sales
The government program for the sale of 4,400 state-owned properties and companies that are no longer needed is motivated as a kind of savings from their maintenance and with expectations of revenue in the budget. And like mass and worker-manager privatization, this sale of state-owned property is starting without a strategy for managing state assets and without guarantees of public benefit. Local authorities are not even asked whether they are interested in some of the properties on the list for their social infrastructure - kindergartens, health centers, sports grounds, social housing and municipal housing complexes, and others.
If Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov is to be believed, this is exactly what will be done with the proceeds from the sales of properties that are no longer needed. But neither he nor the Minister of Regional Development Ivan Ivanov, under whose control the process is, have announced what financial result is expected from the sales - in an optimistic and pessimistic version. The auctions are with secret bidding.
Where will the proceeds go
The proceeds from the transactions are not provided for in the budget. And on May 8, when he announced the program, Zhelyazkov assured that the funds would go to a special fund that would be created with changes to the State Property Law under the regional minister, but the fund in question does not yet exist in the legal world. But the proceeds could go to the Silver Fund, which is supposed to be a guarantor for the pension system, but has a little over 4 billion leva.
The annual costs for all pensions for 2025 exceed 24 billion leva. But the Silver Fund will also require legislative efforts, as it is filled with concession fees, with money from privatization deals, which are almost nonexistent, and with 25% of budget surpluses, but there are none, since the budget has ended with a deficit for the fifth year.
The opposition wants to stop the program
A good opportunity has opened up for the opposition to attack the government with accusations of corrupt practices. "Yes, Bulgaria" (part of "Democratic Bulgaria") has started checking property by property to see if they are really no longer needed or if municipalities can acquire them for use by local communities. Their coalition partner "We Continue the Change" (PP) has started a petition to stop the program under the slogan "Bulgaria is not for sale" and announced that it would publish the most scandalous sites one by one, the first of which is Cape Chervenka. The land with an area of 173,188 sq. m belongs to the Ministry of Defense and is located between Chernomorets and the "Gradina" camping site.
"Save Sofia" demanded to stop the "indiscriminate sale of state properties with public value - green areas, sports facilities, historical sites", including the "Academic" stadium and the Roman amphitheater of Serdika. And local authorities are demanding land. The municipal councilors of the PP-DB in Plovdiv are proposing that four properties with a total area of over 30,000 sq m be made available to the municipality for the construction of a nursery, kindergarten, park and cultural space with an open stage.
Rumen Radev attacks the euro again
President Rumen Radev, however, used the scandal to once again attack joining the eurozone: “The rush with the euro has emptied the treasury and now the cabinet is looking for money and selling off the state”, he said. But revenues are not the main goal. On May 8, the prime minister announced the initiative in the following way: “Unusable assets that create costs but have investment potential should be sold transparently and publicly through an open bidding on an electronic platform”. The list, however, remained a secret until the MRDPW published it on June 24 in response to a request under the Access to Public Information Act (APIA) by blogger and open data activist Boyan Yurukov. It was he who tracked and revealed the scale of the state scheme, continuing to inform about the progress of the process on his blog.
In the end, three months after May 8, the cabinet decided to send the list to parliament so that the majority could "rubber stamp" it. Collective responsibility is the safest insurance. But the first working day of the deputies after their one-month summer vacation is September 3. According to the cabinet's assurances, until they approve the government program, there will be no deals. According to Yurukov, the sale continues with over 20 auctions.
Laws... packed and ready
Without a doubt, the majority of GERB-SDF, DPS-New Beginning, BSP and "There is such a people" will approve the program, given the changes in three laws that it managed to push through on the last working day of parliament. They facilitate a new beginning in the sale of state property, quickly and non-transparently. The Agency for Public Enterprises and Control (successor to the Privatization Agency, b.a.) is now armed with serious powers - it will sell properties to the Ministry of Defense (MOD), for which there are the biggest appetites. Until now, the MOD had the exclusive right to trade with them.
In addition, a breakthrough was made in the “prohibited list” for privatization. Separate parts of the commercial companies included in it with over 50% state participation will be able to be sold without the need for a decision by the parliament. If the assets exceed 500 thousand leva, a decision by the government will be required before the auction by the Agency for Public Enterprises and Control. For example, the Agency can sell through its electronic platform the port terminal "Rosenets", part of the port of Burgas, from where all crude oil in Bulgaria enters for processing, or "Varna East", a separate part of the port of Varna, even though both ports are on the "prohibition list". This means that some of the most attractive and strategically important sites can be nationalized in a non-transparent manner and without parliamentary sanction.
With other legal changes, the Supreme Administrative Court will now rule on the expropriation of private properties for the construction of national and strategic sites, and not the local administrative court based on the location of the property.
In a counterattack
In a barrage of reproaches and explanations, GERB MP Hristo Gadzhev showed a report that in 12 months the president's caretaker governments had sold 262 state properties. And earlier he recalled how in 2023 they stopped PPs that decided to “ forcefully sell properties to the Ministry of Defense in Sofia and major cities”. “But we were unable to stop the leasing of central locations in Sofia for a period of 10 years at ridiculous rents. Because of them, a new building is currently being built next to the National Theater…”, he wrote on Facebook.
There is a danger that political attacks will shift the focus from the real problems - what is the state selling, at what price, have the needs of the municipalities been neglected. It is clear who will lose, but the public deserves to know the names of the winners.
This comment expresses the personal opinion of the author and may not coincide with the positions of the Bulgarian editorial office and the State News Agency as a whole.