Bulgaria’s UNESCO session at risk as authorities fail to act

Sofia: The 47th session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, which is scheduled to be held from 6 to 16 July 2025 in Bulgaria, may fail due to the inaction of the authorities, MPs have warned. The Culture Minister admitted that there is a significant backlog in the organisation.

The news that Bulgaria will host this prestigious forum has been known since the summer of last year and welcomed by the tourism sector. It is expected that around 4,000 UNESCO representatives from 193 countries will come to the session.

However, for months there has been no information about the stage of preparation of state institutions. Last week, the cabinet approved almost 1 million euros, with which the Ministry of Culture will finance the organization of the hosting.

The question of the country’s readiness to host this high-profile forum was also raised in the National Assembly. “As of this moment, the hosting agreement has not yet been signed by the Council of Ministers,” announced MP Manol Peykov from the pro-European PP-DB coalition.

“There is a significant backlog in the organization,” admitted Culture Minister Marian Bachev at the meeting of the parliamentary Culture and Media Committee. “You know that the preparation of such an event requires an extremely long time and it usually starts a week after the end of the previous session, i.e. about a year,” Bachev noted.

He noted that the previous caretaker cabinet, represented by Culture Minister Nayden Todorov, made the decision to accept this invitation rather hastily. After that, no action was taken for months. “And now, when we took office in January, we have identified this delay, which we are trying to make up for,” explained the Culture Minister.

Despite the funds already allocated from the budget for organizing the event, there are many public procurements that need to be made and it is not clear how much time there will be for this. However, some organizational activities have begun, the Ministry of Culture and other departments are in active dialogue with UNESCO and there will be clarity about this event very soon, the minister explained.

The tourism industry is concerned that the lack of information prevents companies in Sofia from adequately planning their employment in the period 6-16 July and from offering the necessary logistical support and marketing assistance to promote the Bulgarian sites included in the World Heritage List.

“In the conditions of an information vacuum, rumors are becoming increasingly persistent that our country intends to abandon the event. We express our position that such a decision would cause irreparable damage to the international image of Bulgaria and in particular to the hotel industry,” the Bulgarian Hotel Association and five other tourism organizations wrote in a letter to the Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov.