Bulgaria’s caretaker PM interviews parties’ nominees for European Commissioner

Sofia: Bulgaria’s caretaker Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev held talks with the three candidates so far nominated by parliamentary groups to be the country’s European Commissioner, the government information service said on August 28.

Glavchev met GERB-UDF nominee Ekaterina Zaharieva, Iskra Mihailova – whose nomination was announced by Delyan Peevski hours before Ahmed Dogan’s Movement for Rights and Freedoms said that it had expelled Peevski, Mihailova and others from the party – and Velislava Petrova, the nominee of Parliament’s smallest group, ITN.

The talks with Zaharieva and Mihailova were held at the Cabinet building while Glavchev interviewed Petrova via video conference.

The deadline for Bulgaria, along with other EU member states, to nominate a European Commissioner in August 30.

The statement said that on August 27, Glavchev wrote to all parliamentary groups calling on them to take into consideration the issue of which the two candidates for Bulgarian European Commissioner in the next European Commission will be.

Given the expiring deadline for reaction, Glavchev expects nominations by August 29.

Glavchev is prepared to meet nominated candidates from other parliamentary groups who have not made proposals so far, the statement said.

Later on August 28, the We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria coalition announced that it was nominating Julian Popov, who has served twice as environment minister, to be Bulgaria’s next European Commissioner.

WCC-DB parliamentary leader, former prime minister Nikolai Denkov, said in a letter to Glavchev that WCC-DB maintained its view that Parliament should hear the candidates and decide which should be nominated by the country.

Popov is one of the most influential voices in Europe on the subject of energy and that is why we rely on him as a non-partisan candidate and an expert with high competence, WCC-DB said.

At a moment of political crisis, the promotion of a non-party figure with the status of a world expert is the way to show that the Bulgarian interest is greater than the narrow party one, it said.