„The arrest of Varna Mayor Blagomir Kotsev and the protests are a natural continuation of what happened earlier in Sofia.
This was said in an interview for the program „This Saturday“ Christian Vigenin, MEP from the BSP/S&D.
Vigenin is a long-time politician – former Minister of Foreign Affairs, was also Deputy Speaker of 6 parliaments.
„The scale is not the same, but I was Foreign Minister when people protested against the appointment of Delyan Peevski as head of DANS (in the „Oresharski“ cabinet). Then again, there were ambassadors who even allowed themselves to make a common position, in which they supported the protest and criticized the government's actions, added Vigenin.
The socialist was referring to the case of German Ambassador Irene Planck, who appeared at the protests in defense of Blagomir Kotsev.
As a result, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) “appeals to representatives of diplomatic missions in the country and their heads to show special attention and professional sensitivity regarding their public appearances, in order to avoid opportunities for their instrumentalization for domestic political purposes“.
“The German Embassy monitors all important domestic political processes. Sometimes this includes collecting personal impressions from various protests. This is the reason for Ambassador Irene Planck's visit yesterday to the protest organized by “Justice for All”. As close friends and partners in the EU and NATO, Bulgaria and Germany maintain a friendly and trust-filled dialogue“, the diplomatic mission responded to this.
According to Vigenin, all this shows that we are going in circles and are in the same situation as 12 years ago, which is sad.
“Are we making a mistake somewhere, or have our partners not learned that these are internal matters and should not get involved in this“, the politician commented.