 I kindly welcome you to the talk of Bulgaria protest 2020, which is held by M. They are joined by Rosen, a journalist, who's very interested in the restrictions around media freedom in Bulgaria. Sabina Hillayel, who's a system professor and does a science on the implications of the transitions after the communist era. And Ratka is a lawyer and comments on the judiciary situation in Bulgaria. A nice welcome and thank you, go ahead please. Thank you. Okay, now's the time actually I guess, sorry. So let's go if something happens but he doesn't. No, it's all right. You're wrong. No, I'm just trying to share my screen. But right now, it's not really responding. And let me let me try again. All right. I'll be right back just two seconds. So a very nice start, right? I'm sorry. Let's see if that happens. Yes. Okay. Would you like someone from us to try and share your presentation? No, it doesn't matter. We lost her. You're muted, Rosen. I mean, that someone else could start the time that Maya is preparing herself. All right, good. Do you want to try that? Yes, yes, just let me open the presentation and I'll try it. Okay. Wow, let me see. We need to improvise here. If you can hear me. So I am going to share the presentation now. Do you see something? I see my presentation. This is your presentation. That's nice. So I have the wrong presentation. Very sorry. Let's try like this. Hello, people. My name is Radka. I'm a corporate lawyer working in Bulgaria right now, but I have been an expert for 15 years. And our colleague here was trying to tell us some outlines about the situation in Bulgaria, the protests and why people suddenly went out on the streets, which background the whole thing has and which points are we going to discuss here for further information. So let's start with the protests. As you know, the summer in Bulgaria was very hot. I'm here. All right, I'll just be very, very quick. Sorry, guys. It didn't happen before with the sessions. So let's start with Bulgarian protest 2020 overview context is Bulgaria. Just brief, involved in a first and second world on the losing side. Communist Party ruled by the Bulgarian Communist Party in the face lasting till 1990. Transition started with November 1989 with demonstrations there. Started the transition period, which we can feel till today when Margaret Gunn Valley and violence killings, criminal activity and lawlessness joined you in 2007. And in 2009, Bojko Burizov became the prime minister with his public center, right party gear. So let's take a look at some of the current key political figures. Bojko Burizov's career includes membership in the Communist Party and his sequent rise in the security services at that time. He had a security firm bodyguard then former communist leader, you see them see him on the left, and a mayor of the capital, Sofia and a prime minister. He has also for the achievements such as a station of euros in his drawer for a difficult times, a tape, a audio tape caught, threatening to burn a member of the European Parliament, Elena Yoncheva, and a Barcelona Gates candle about a 1.5 million house bought for his mistress, among others. Other key figure is media mogul, the Leon Pevsky, seen here on the left, politician, oligarch media mogul. And according to many, he's the driving force in Bulgarian politics in his 20s, most notably still a student. He has the board of directors of Varna spot, one of the largest of the country, and 2007 he was fired when he was deputy minister without any repercussions. Notably, 2013, his appointment as president of the state agency for national security led to protest and later the appointment, this appointment was revised. And of 2016, he owns roughly 20 newspapers, right? Good. And we see here that our chief public prosecutor since November 2019, we hear about him later in the talk. So let's see what's the current state in Bulgaria. Bulgaria holds currently the 111th place in the World Press Freedom Index. According to Transparency International, Bulgaria is the most corrupt in the EU and is ranking actually 74th globally. We hold the first place in the European as in income inequality, risk of poverty or social exclusion and crime reporting as data of 2018. And Bulgaria but holds the last place in gross domestic product per capita as in 2019. So let's see which several events preceded the protests in 2020. That would be the first thing national security services got here on the in the picture on the right, paid by tax money, who were guarding a national property beach declared to one of them as a private residence, John Oligarch, named Ahmed Dugan. And here exposed by the politician Christopher Knopf, opposition politician Christopher Knopf here with the flag on the left. Second, the previously mentioned achievements of the PM Borisov, audio tape recordings and the thousands of heroes in the draw in his drawer and as in the photograph. And third, the chief public prosecutor Gershchev, rating the offices of the Bulgarian president, who is a prominent critic of the party and him. So these several concrete reasons, and the general perception of injustice and corruption and abuse of power of PM Borisov and the prosecutor Gershchev, let's actually to the protest in 2020. So over over two videos actually made for a campaign for a soul from the lion in September 2020, we, which we don't have any, any, yes. Any reactions on fun, I will tell some brief facts about the protests. So they began on the 9th of July, and during the subsequent months are marked with arrested protesters blocked into city roads, tent camps, protests around the country and abroad. Some of the conversations of the Brussels government during this period, though, thankfully to the protests include stimulus packages for the unemployed health school students, replacement of four government ministers, resignation of the minister for justice, two national security guards being fired after the signal of the pre events. And on the 5th of August, during the Guelph's ruling parties conference, also notably some men affiliated with the party assaulted to journalists, Paulina Paolova and again, she Kerova calling the former trash and having her phone thrown several times with the warning that her presence is not welcome at all. So and we come to the second of September. Actually, the national grand national revolt, where it was followed by a police crackdown and where the violence escalated quickly. So police still gazing, continuing protesters using water cannons, attacking further with pepper spray and baton charges. A journalist, Dmitry Kanarov was beaten up, brutally kicked in the head, thrown to the ground. His camera was taken. And although he identified himself as a journalist many times, numerous media organizations such as the International Press Institute expressed a condemned the beating. And further aftermath of this process include, for example, the rating of a business that was supportive of the protests and with the augmentation by the authorities of a discrepancy of international documentation or something with five euros. So briefly, supporters of the protests are actually brought to the spectrum of society, presidential men rather security union, nearly 170 scientists, the intellectuals and artists, students, different organization, anti-racism, disability and eligibility rights groups, trade unions and also immigrant communities from all over the world. Some of the protesting fractions include the civil movement fighter, Boets, which means fighter but is an acronym for Bulgaria united with one goal, which notably today, this year, sent an inquiry to the European Commission revealing that misappropriation of funds from a Bulgarian minister of agriculture, then the justice for all initiatives which demands deep reform of the judiciary, the poisonous trio, a lawyer, sculptor and former radiojournalist, vocal critics of the government and one of the main organisators of the protests and the position party as Bulgaria and the civil platform is Pravista Bege with similar goals, mainly the judicial reform and the construction of the corrupt structures with the party as Bulgaria. So we come to the European Union and its reactions, most notably on the 10th of July, one day after the starting of the protests, Mantret Beba, chairman of the EPP, issued a support for the government of Borisov, still valid till this day. Funny enough, this particular sentence can be also truthfully read just by cancelling one, two words, the EPP group fully supposable government of Borisov and its effort to protect the economy against the negative effects of fight against corruption and the process that is being made to join the eurozone. This is of course my personal opinion. We further have the MAP, Roberto Mazzola, also part of the EPP and connotable intervention at an attempt to suppress a liberal resolution, a EU committee on civil liberties, justice and home affairs to condemn the police crackdown during the Bulgarian protests and to stand for the Bulgarian people in this liberal resolution, which was most notably her attempt was the deletion of points addressing the misuse of the European funds and direct allegation of corruptions towards the prime minister Borisov written down in this liberal resolution, which was accepted actually on the 8th of October 2020. But yes, you'll have the slides, you can read, it's very nice to see the integral support for the people of Bulgaria standing there. But we have also some friendly, honest faces, they need to be named that expressed vocal support for the Bulgarian people and were on the ground in several occasions. You see them here, Claire, Dany, Daniel Freund, Ramona Trugario, Paul Tank, Ivan Simchich and Sophie in Welt. And just a brief personal takeaway from me, it's the protest for me was the long feeling of community, civic consciousness, activism, tolerance and empathy. But also we see problems that are still persistent visible today due to sexism, racism towards from many people and anti-LGBTQA, most notably on the online social platforms, which were for me the main means to experience the protest. So that's actually for me and now also being a political researcher, we briefly discuss Bulgaria's transition in the context of communication mechanism between different groups. All right. Okay, thank you. This was a very quick but on the point representation of what's happening in Bulgaria. Michael here is going to be to position what you just talked about in terms of the general transition of the country and to talk a little bit about how civil society and the EU come together in order to help direct the efforts of the state institutions to transition. So I'm going to try to share my presentation but I think M is still sharing her screen. Is that the case? No, you can share yours. I'm out. I can share. Okay. Do you see this? Yes, we do. Okay, so do you see me or do you just see my screen? You are with the screen, so I'm with the screen. Okay. So before I start talking about civil society, the EU and the state and my communication model, I want to preface these that I start with an understanding of democracy that requires a debate and a discussion of different interest groups, grievances and interests. And so in order for that to happen, we need to have strong civil society, right? I very much use a Lockean definition of civil society, one that follows John Locke, which suggests that really the norms and the values by which society lives are something that's created within civil society and civil society is in charge of not only creating these norms and values but also enforcing them. And the way civil society does that is by instilling confidence and trust in state institutions, right? So in a way providing state institutions with the ability to enforce these norms and values. So what that means is that one way to evaluate democracy or democratic transition in the case of some countries is to look at the ability of civil society to do that, right? To empower the state institutions to protect the norms and the values. The consequences of that is that one civil society, in order to evaluate actually civil society, we need to look at their ability to instill trust and confidence in the government but also withdraw trust from the government, right? And the way that happens often especially in transitioning countries and in the case of Bulgaria is through protests. So the reason I'm interested in the protest is in all protests and in the transition is because the protests serve as a measure of the success of the post-government transition in Bulgaria. So this is on civil society. Another thing that I need to make clear here is that I am not looking necessarily at the organizational structures of different actors. So I'm not looking at how civil society is organized or how state institutions are organized or how the EU is organized, but I'm looking at the interaction between these actors, right? So I'm looking at the way the EU communicates with the state or communicates with civil society, what's the role of civil society in communication with the state and so on and so forth. So my communication model suggests that if the state is to actually guide the country through a transition and achieve some type of consolidated democracy, it has to have this pressure from the EU. Bulgaria has been a member since 2007 and even before that through the conditionality approach the EU applied that pressure. So I'm going to be looking at this connection between the EU and the state and how the EU impacts the state in its attempt to transition to democracy. I'm also going to be looking at the way civil society sort of bottom up pressures the state and I also be looking at the way the EU is connected to civil society. Now the reason for this last connection is that really Bulgarian civil society and any post-communist civil society in the very beginning of the transition was not equipped well because of communist legacies because of different issues was not equipped well to apply this pressure to the state. So what is actually the role of the EU in sort of teaching Bulgarian civil society to play the role that civil society is supposed to play right and so in other words what is the norm diffusion process by which the EU empowers civil society to put pressure on the state. The last connection that you see here is what comes out from civil society and goes to the European Union and to me theoretically the feedback is extremely important. So does civil society have the ability to actually provide the European Union with feedback in terms of domestic particularities in terms of characteristics of the country in terms of what's possible and what is not possible so that the EU can then adjust its conditionality approach to the state. So I'm going to start with this relationship and I will be presenting the findings of two projects here which hopefully will come together in this communication model. So to measure the EU civil society interaction over the years I use social network analysis and social network analysis is something that tells us about interaction in a group of actors not necessarily the actors themselves. So what you see here are the results of these social network analyses over time so 2000 and 2007 and sorry this last one is 2013 that's my bad. The specific score that you see is something called eigenvector centrality and eigenvector centrality determines the extent to which a particular node in this case the European Union is essential for a particular network in this case NGOs right Bulgarian NGOs. Now a side note I had to use NGOs because social movements are pretty impossible to measure so those are different NGOs which work in a network and then the EU is taken out on the top and this is the social network analysis represents the extent to which in different years the EU was central to the organization of these NGOs. What we see here is that in 2003 EU was on the fifth place in 2007 it was on the second place right 2007 is a year that was selected because of I don't it's in German I don't know what do you guys hear me yes I can hear you yes somebody speak in German and I don't know if they're talking to me. No I was I was it was my mistake I'm very very sorry but I will use that that we don't have too much time perhaps okay just a few yeah yeah all right yeah so anyhow the the result of that is that and I need to shorten it but the idea here is that the EU so there are two interesting findings right the one is the EU gets involved a little bit later with Bulgarian civil society and as a result the Bulgarian civil society is incapable of really participating in the transition in these initial years of the transition where for example the constitution was written a large body of little code was produced and civil society wasn't really there to to contribute 2007 we see the European Union a little bit more involved but in 2013 the European Union again is not involved so that's my finding on the connection between the European Union and civil society and unfortunately is not a good one in order to study the connection between the state and civil society I look at the protests in 2013 which were very similar to me to the protest in 2020 and I use linguistic models in order to determine the extent to which the protesters in 2013 are actually communicating with state institutions in that case the parliament so the goal of these was to discover a set of rhetorical themes that are both politically interesting but also and also partly differentiated and so politically interesting means themes that are represented in parliamentary discussions more frequently than in everyday language and partly differentiated means phrases and themes that are more commonly used by one party over the other so I downloaded all the transcripts from the parliamentary discussions during the times of the protest I created three language models one was the first one was a language model of the Bulgarian language which is derived from Wikipedia just because I needed a large corpus of Bulgarian language and the purpose of that one was to get rid of all types of um language parts that are not interesting so propositions things like she her also think uh you know mister uh names and so on and so forth then I created a language model of a collection of Bulgarian parliamentary transcripts and also a different language model for each major political parties and so long story short the results you can see on this slide on the right side you have what the civil society is talking about during the protest again those are the protests in 2013 civil society talks about resignation of the government new elections for parliament they at one point wanted a change in the electoral system the main grievance was transparency and accountability mechanism so entire corruption practices commitment to the Bulgaria's European direction European norms was something that they were using a lot and also some groups required direct democracy which means more referendums so while civil society is on the streets asking for all these things on the left side of the slide you can see what parliament's talking about so on top is a different part of this then you have on the side by month and for the sake of time I'm not going to go too much into it but you guys will have the slides to kind of look at it after that the general idea is that really we observe a huge disconnect in the rhetoric of parliament and civil society in other words civil society is talking about major issues such as corruption such as lack of commitment to european direction and european norms while at the same time parliament is discussing tobacco production local government closing borders illegal immigrants and so on and so forth right so the conclusion here is that if we look at civil society maybe we'll find that it's well structured and organized and if we look at parliament and other institutions maybe we can theoretically find that they're also well organized but my focus in this transition is the communication between the different actors and through the social network analysis and through this I find that it's lacking so sorry for taking more time and thank you hello do I have to do I get my time now yes but I think we can just try to be very concise and I will try to try to be very quick so I'm going to be talking to you about the protests and the background especially the unprecedented demand of the protest it's unprecedented in the whole democratic world as far as I know and this is the demand for the resignation of the attorney general as far as I'm concerned I haven't heard of such a demand in any protest in the democratic Europe so far and it is interesting to know why exactly the attorney general what has he done wrong so I'll start with a quick background the on July 9th the the protest broke out after a heavily armed police forces broke into the president's offices on assumptions I I want to underline the the word assumptions of dealing with influence whatever that means so the prosecuted background for that was as Em explained earlier the opposition politicians Christo Ivanov who who accosted to the beach of Rosinitz now a private residence of a former political leader of Medogan and there he met national security guards who weren't supposed to be there so the president commented on that that if the national security guards were still under his supervision it won't it wouldn't be happening this this thing wouldn't be happening a day later the prosecutor unknown unknown how to say to avoid the word accomplice but unknown accomplice of the government was storming was raiding the presidency the president's building and two hours later after this this ratia the Bulgarian society went on the streets and this time it was not about economical questions it was not about money and social social matters but it was about protecting democracy because the attorney general this prosecutor in Mangeshiv which we have the pleasure of working with since 2019 since December he was a very controversial figure since his election as the single candidate in one of his interviews as a candidate for the for the position he told he doesn't believe in separating the authorities into legislative judiciary judiciary and administrative so he practically stated how he doesn't believe in democracy then he was flat out elected by the majority of the of the members of the judicial system the judicial overseeing electoral system there are protests against him then they are there are protests now and he started his career of course with very controversial actions one of those which involved the world cultural heritage taken as evidence from one successful businessman in Bulgaria who was famous for his collections of Thracian heritage unique unique antiques for the whole world for the history of Europe were taken into plastic bags and locked into evidence so the prosecution said but then two months later two months later they popped out on the black market or on the antiques market it was not really the black market so we also that it was not evident the evidence they wanted with with this cultural heritage they wanted the money and upon these actions a German a German expert from the espionage museum in Berlin a historian he told for the Deutsche Welle foreign analysis that the actions of the attorney general Gershif are unprofessional illegal and scandalous so there's many things okay thank you we have three or four more minutes for rosson and that's it so that's why it's me now yeah yeah okay thank you well as you already heard we have troubles with corruption with civil society judiciary and as far as we know three key elements need to be present for an efficient democracy independent judiciary strong political opposition and free media and I could tell you that as a country we are totally screwed I started working as a journalist then more than 15 years ago in a weekly newspaper called capital it's one of the few free voices nowadays in Bulgaria when Bulgarian government and judiciary were trying to to convince the European Commission that the country was ready to enter in the EU the European Commission has been closely monitoring the ongoing judicial reform the fight against corruption and organized crime Bulgaria become a member of the EU in 2007 and this monitoring monitoring continued afterwards back in 2007 Bulgaria was on 51st place in the world press freedom index of reporters without borders and what happens after Bulgaria joined the EU the media freedom literally collapsed and since 2019 Bulgaria is on 111th place within the index of reporters without borders Bulgaria is somewhere around countries where political regimes are putting journalists in in in prisons because of their because of their work so we are the last place not only in European Union but in in Europe as well you last year the European Commission was silently observing the stagnation of the free press in Bulgaria and that was totally inexplicable because the European Commission was expecting from Bulgaria to to achieve judicial reform and to to fight against corruption and it's common sense that you could not expect effective fight against corruption without strong and independent investigative journalism it is common sense also that you could not have accountable and transparent institution if there are no journalists that are asking questions simply asking questions to the government you could not have a critical mass of we need a society that could go out on the streets and protest if they are not well informed on what's going in their own country and back in 2019 European Commission put down in their monitoring report on the reform of judiciary and fight against corruption that the status quo for for Bulgaria media makes all those reforms regarding judiciary and fight against corruption almost impossible and the paradox is that it's the European Commission itself is mainly to blame for the state of the media in freedom in Bulgaria because when Bulgaria become a member of the EU it started receiving European funds billions had to to go to agriculture infrastructure projects education science reform of administration judiciary instead EU funds turned out to be a poison i don't explain you know briefly why they quickly become a major driver of the Bulgarian economy they they endangered the competition because the government pre-allocated process public procurement to companies that are close to them and European funds are the ones that have contributed the most to the state of the media in Bulgaria how because each in each budget of European program a certain amount must be spent on publicity and advertising of that that project and with this money society needs to learn what what has been achieved with European funding you know to show the projects the new roads and blah blah blah and the political class of Bulgaria quickly quickly realized that with this money they could buy media comfort so the media that were pro-government started receiving state funding through the European funds and those who asked the questions to the governments will not allow to to to receive uh such a money in just single year the state has become the largest advertiser in media the government was buying media comfort with EU funds and EU was endangering the democracy with within my country with using their own EU funds over the years free voices become less and less if a journalist showed the courage to investigate corruption within the government or simply asked the questions he was immediately punished by the government so I could just mention you could receive tax checks from the tax authorities you could be some money on the police station just for random questioning but most powerful weapon of the government is mayor campaigns in the yellow media tabloid media that are that are close to the government it's it's quite it's quite an irony but one of those newspapers which is very common and very very popular in Bulgaria was receiving EU money at the time that the same website was put on the list of newspapers that are that were spreading fake news on the on the European Union some of my colleagues that have received that checks from on because of their work or even you know indictments by by the prosecutor's office it was not until this year that the European Parliament saw the problem and adopted the resolution on the rule of law and media freedom in Bulgaria and I'll finish with this in my opinion it's too late that's that's briefly for me thank you thank you all there is actually a question we can perhaps put it in very quickly which says why do you think EU based news outlets outside of Bulgaria are basically ignoring this story especially when Belarus is getting lots of coverage I think that would be for you rosen for the past 15 years I was I was working with with foreign journalists that were covering Bulgaria the context is is very complex here in Bulgaria and it's very hard to explain what is going on in in our country to to European audience but I think that's when the situation in Bulgaria is now in agenda of the European Parliament we saw in the last six months very in-depth pieces in Central European newspapers all over I mean in Germany in France in Italy in Switzerland so finally our foreign colleagues realized that it's it's an issue and actually they realized where European taxpayers money are going all right I I think we're done perhaps brief commentary from you Radka if you want to add something because you were cut a little bit short in one two sentences I don't see anyone I'm telling me I cannot speak perhaps if you would like to to to make a summary or an abstract of what you wanted to say thank you I wanted to point out that the judicial system in Bulgaria is really up to a medieval level and it starts with the attorney generals because as he likes as the gashif the the the current person in in service likes to call himself the instrument of God it's it's not a normal thing I think we can finish with that because anything I I say after this statement it will be it's not necessary I think the person a prosecutor who likes to call himself the instrument of God in front of all people is not suitable for such a responsible service yes thank you very much thank you thank you all we don't have any questions right now I think we can close it off with with I don't know perhaps we'll I don't know I'm not going to speak let's thank you and I just want to say you know if anybody has further questions they can always contact at least me and I think my contact information is there and Bulgaria needs a lot of help in all different aspects so discussion is where things start so at least I'm open to talk about this more with all people thank you thank you we can we have to finish now okay thank you guys yeah thank you