 Good morning, everyone. We're delighted to see you all today. My name is Heather Conley. I'm Director and Senior Fellow of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Sorry, we started a few minutes late. We took the opportunity to walk from CSIS to the hotel. It's a two-block walk, but I tell you, it was so beautiful. It was hard not to keep walking and enjoying the beautiful day. So we are delighted that you are taking time away from a beautiful outdoor day to be with us this morning. We are extremely fortunate to have Foreign Minister Nikolai Vladimirov with us this morning. The Foreign Minister is on one daunting diplomatic tour. He started with the Prime Minister in Damascus, then to Luxembourg, to Washington, next to New York for the Nonproliferation Treaty, a review conference, and then, did you tell me, a six-day tour of every Balkan capital after he leaves New York? So I hope he's taking his vitamins. That's all I can say, but we are glad that you took time to visit with us here in Washington. We asked the Minister to give his perspective on the importance of Europe and the transatlantic relationship from a unique Bulgarian perspective. And this relationship is doing so much right now from, obviously, developing Afghan national security forces via NATO, from providing Haitian earthquake relief via the EU, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Agenda, and so on and so on. This relationship is doing so much and working together, but yet it doesn't feel as if we're connecting on all the levels that we should. So I think it's an opportune moment to pause and to reflect and to regain the sense of transatlantic importance to meeting the challenges of the 21st century. CSIS was extremely fortunate to have the Minister visit with us last fall, although he was Defense Minister at the time. He was not Foreign Minister, but we are delighted that now with a new hat and a new perspective, but yet carrying some of the same opportunities and challenges that the Minister is with us today. He is known to many of you in this room, but prior to his government service, the Minister served as a key member of the European Parliament, serving on the Foreign Affairs Committee as well as the Internal Markets Committee. Before he entered politics, he worked in the grassroots and civil society as the program director for the Open Society Institute in Sofia. So he brings many perspectives and we are delighted again to welcome you, Minister, to provide your thoughts and please join me in welcoming the Minister with assistance. Thank you. Thank you, Heather. Indeed, when we, a few months ago, came to Washington, we discussed the opportunity to speak at CSIS. I came in a different hat. I keep saying that I'm happy that my new hat is on Minister of Health, because we're now embarking on our own health reform in Bulgaria, but that's one I'd like to stay away from, not because I don't feel it's extremely important for our country, but because it's one that I feel that people are far better qualified than me to deal with. I think I've been in DC now for 24 hours and within these 24 hours I've managed to run into, starting from the plane, the Foreign Minister of Slovakia, my good friend Miroslav Flajčak, and as we landed in DC at the airport, I ran into Carl Bildt, the Foreign Minister of Sweden. By dinner I was already meeting the President of the European Parliament, the Lithuanian Defense Minister, and yesterday morning we had the, yesterday afternoon at the AGC, a beautiful event that the American Jewish Committee organized. We had the Spanish Foreign Minister as well as the Dutch Foreign Minister, so you have about a third of EU foreign ministers here. And we're all here carrying the same message. And that message is that the transatlantic relationship is the most fundamental cornerstone of how we believe that Europe and America see the world. The transatlantic relationship is the core value that we all carry with us and that we understand is the force for change in the world. Of course there's so many of us that we sometimes get it that it's difficult for you to talk to all of us at the same time and figure out what exactly we're trying to say. But we're also working on that and we're working with that with great excitement in the European Union after the Lisbon Treaty to try and set up both the new external action service of the European Union but also become much more coherent in the way that we speak with one voice and carry one message to the rest of the world as a Union of 27, as a Union that holds at the core of its values freedom, democracy, development, prosperity for all. And it is indeed in this context that my country, Bulgaria, now must look at the world in a different way. It must look in the world not as a small country versus big countries but as a country that belongs to an important community of values and that is the European Union as a country that is part of the North Atlantic Alliance in which both Europe and America have a commonality not just of values but of interests and how we deal with them. And it is a challenge. I must admit that it is a challenge. Before or over the last 20 years we had to exceed to Europe and to the North Atlantic Alliance and that took a lot of effort and it took a lot of effort on the side of the administration, on the side of the political establishment but most of all on the side of the people of Bulgaria. And sometimes this price was very high. Reforms were delayed and reforms were made difficult. Some reforms were not priorities but overall I think we have been quite successful despite all of our drawbacks and certain cases but we have been very successful to be where we are today. And today we need to look at how the world around us is changing and the world is changing definitely very, very fast. The balance of power is shifting. I think about four or five years ago it was very difficult to even conceive that one would read in the papers about the U.S.-China relationship, the way it is today. It would have been very difficult five or ten years ago to even consider the fact that the European Union can have the commonality that it now seeks in its foreign policy voice in the work of my good friend Kathy Ashton. It was completely perhaps impossible to even consider that we would be thinking of how to integrate and how to bring closer to us countries in the western Balkans, how to engage constructively and with great interest and excitement with countries across the Black Sea from where we are and how to find our new role in supporting peace in the Middle East. Of course we have also seen a number of new challenges emerge and these challenges have by far not been easy and they are not easy to address these days. Iran has moved on a path of radicalism and a path that leaves a lot of questions unanswered as to the use of its nuclear program. We've seen countries emerge, China, Russia, Brazil and India, emerge with a set of values that is not necessarily exactly the set of values that we might have. We've seen countries emerge powerfully on the international stage that we need to deal with and find a new balance with which to be able to achieve our goals of development in Africa, our goals of addressing issues of climate change, our goals of economic prosperity and our goals of actually peace in the part of the world where we live in. There's a very different world from the world that actually formed me and many like me as a generation in politics. We were formed with a number of at least three, I think, key events today and many of us are now stepping onto the stage. The first of this has been the end of communism in 89 and this event, this outburst of freedom and this outburst of not just freedom but of expression that we had in Central and Eastern Europe after the end of communism and the strong link with America and a strong transatlantic commitment that stems from that. A few years later many of us in Southeast Europe had to face a tough environment in which we had the Milosevic dictatorship in Serbia, the wars in Yugoslavia, the devastation that all caused and the realization that it is not just the freedom that we aspire to but it is the responsibility to be tolerant ethnically and religiously towards our neighbors but also within our own communities so that we can live in prosperity and peace. And a few years later, unfortunately, we had September 11th and that is when many of us realized that actually what we hold so dear this freedom and this tolerance to our hearts is not necessarily something that is universally shared and we actually might need to stand up for it. So there's a whole new generation of people that are now emerging, of political leaders in Europe that are now emerging, that have been formed by these three different events and in one way or another they're all connected to America and one way or another they all have implications for how we understand the world and how we understand the transatlantic relationship to be. And the core of our understanding is that we as countries, as members of the European Union, as NATO, as Europe and America, hold one thing very dear to our hearts and this is the concept that our sovereignty carries a responsibility with it. We have a responsibility that we bring to the rest of the world and to the regions for which we have responsibility and this is the idea that it is not just our values but it is our interests that are common. I've often been amazed at how intellectually challenging discussions can be about Europe and America drifting apart, about how we don't actually any more have anything in common, we've become so different and that is a great misconception because I believe that the core at the end of the day, the community of values that we have is much stronger than the differences that we might have politically from time to time. The commonality of interests that we have in development, in democracy, in human rights, in climate change might actually be much more exciting and much more perspective than the difference that we can have in our discussions. And it is our responsibility, both in Europe and your responsibility in America, to understand that together we're much stronger and together we must work in a much more exciting and responsible way to help solve a lot of the problems that we face today. Bulgaria is a small country. Bulgaria is a country that is in a region that has, for many, many years, if not hundreds, been characterized as an area of instability and we can all remember various quotes that politicians a hundred years ago used to say about the Balkans. But Bulgaria also has its responsibility and it carries its weight in our part of the world. And to us there are at least three very, very important areas on which we can focus. And we believe that focusing on these areas with our friends in America, with our friends in the rest of the European Union, we can actually be much more successful. First of all, this is the Western Balkans. If the European Union were created to make war impossible in Europe, what more important it is there now to do in the Western Balkans then bring in all of our friends into the European Union and we can make war impossible in the Western Balkans. Because the war in the Western Balkans was much closer in time now than the Second World War and then the scars are still very visible in society. So we have a historic responsibility to help our friends reach their goal, their ultimate goal of folding into the family of European nations that has made war impossible. There are a number of key questions that need to be answered in the Western Balkans where we can help. One, firstly, perhaps most importantly right now is Bosnia. Bosnia is a country that still faces a number of ethnic divisions. It faces many, many challenges to its federal structure. But we need to be forward-looking and we need to be much more excited about the future that we can build together with Bosnia than we were until recently. And I'm very, very happy that at last week, I believe, in the Tallinn meeting of the NATO Council, together with Secretary Clinton and other colleagues, we worked intensively to give Bosnia the membership action plan prospect, to invite Bosnia to join the membership action plan for NATO so that we can have an additional tool to help our friends there actually reform and come together around the commonality of values. And this is in the interest of both America and it is in the interest of Europe and it is in the interest of countries like Bulgaria. And this is where our responsibility lies, of bringing our allies and partners from across the Atlantic on issues where if we work together we can be far more successful than if we work separately. Bosnia is going to be very difficult. I don't think anyone underestimates the challenges that that country faces. But if we can't address these challenges, if we can't finish the business that was started years ago, we might just as well go back home and have a drink, watch TV, but not actually be involved in politics. This is one of our missions. We need to work very closely with Serbia. Serbia is a country that is now facing severe economic problems, that is facing a very emotional time because of its history with Kosovo, because of its history over the last few many years now with the wars of Yugoslavia. But we must find it in ourselves to reach out to those reformists and those democratic leaders in Serbia that are actually willing to take it on the long and difficult road towards Europe and towards integration into our broad community of nations. We must do that because unless we do that, we will leave a hole right in the middle of the Balkans and the Balkans shall never be fully part of a Europe united, free and whole. We need to do that. We need to do that very actively and we need a partnership in that. We need to work very closely with the rest of our friends in the Western Balkans to resolve all kinds of outstanding issues. We need to help Kosovo. Kosovo is a country that is struggling now to develop its institutions, to find its place in the world, to develop its economic sustainability. And we need to reach out to the authorities in Kosovo and help them in this. And I think this is one perhaps in which we've been most active until now and we have a long way to go. Reaching out to Kosovo doesn't mean that we don't, we should not be speaking to our partners there about the challenges that they face and about the need for Kosovo really to become a multi-ethnic society in which Albanians and Serbs and other communities live side by side in peace and prosper. And these are messages that I will be carrying as soon as I go back from New York next week after the NPT review conference and start my long trip around the Balkans. And the core message of that trip is that Bulgaria is back in the Balkans. Bulgaria wants to play an active part. Bulgaria wants to find a niche where we can help our friends in the European Union and NATO to resolve issues and resolve problems in a constructive way, not in trying to fly the banner and play the game of who is going to be leader of the region. I think that's, you know, as one would usually say, that's so 20th century. We need to go beyond that. We need to be practical and helpful. We face major challenges again in the Black Sea area, in the region of the Black Sea, which is one region which I think everyone calls a region but everyone who uses that word realizes immediately that it's very difficult to call it a region when you have such a diversity of countries surrounding the Black Sea. We have a lot of, we have business, we haven't even begun to tackle in the Black Sea. We've often talked about the agenda of democracy in this part of the world, but we have failed completely to look at the agenda of extremely practical issues like environment and safety of shipping lanes and maritime safety in general and coordinating policies that would make actually the Black Sea a safer place for both travel and for both businesses and transit. We have failed even to look at how we work together on the security challenges in the Black Sea. Bulgaria is now facing a tough time fighting crime and corruption, a tough, but I think ultimately a successful endeavor which the government has started a few months ago stemming from the fact that when we had the election last year, people came out and voted and clearly said to us we can't continue the way that the situation is. We need somebody to clean up the house. We need somebody to put things in order. We can put things in order in our own house if we don't work with our partners across the Black Sea and our partners in the Western Balkans on tackling traffic routes, on tackling human trafficking, on tackling both drugs and all kinds of other challenges that we face. When one sits in Sofia and we're so much focused on Europe and America these days that one often tends to forget that there are a bunch of countries that are far closer to home than actually Brussels. It's a three hour flight to get to Brussels but I think it's a bit over two hours to fly from Sofia to Damascus. There are a number of countries between Belgium and Bulgaria but there's only one country between Bulgaria, Syria, Iraq and Iran and that's Turkey. It is inevitable that we look much more closely again with our partners in the European Union and NATO on how can we be helpful in what is going on in tackling the big challenges in the Middle East because they affect us dramatically and they affect us pretty much instantly because of our geographic location. This is why the government is now embarking on a policy to reach out to old friends and new partners in the Middle East. Over the last few weeks the Prime Minister and I have been fortunate enough to reopen our relationship with countries like Kuwait and Qatar to restart our own relationship with countries like Syria to begin this trip with a very, very important trip to Israel with which we have a strategic relationship to host in Sofia the Prime Minister of Lebanon and have intensive and very wholesome discussions with our friends in Turkey about how we can be helpful in this process. I'm not saying we're there to resolve Middle East peace. I wish we were but I think that's something we'll leave to the United States at this point. But what we can do is we can be helpful and we can be much more focused on a niche where we can assist. And we can't do this without a transatlantic partnership. We need the transatlantic partnership in order to be able to speak, not just in Europe with one voice but to be able in Europe and America to work side by side in addressing the challenges that we face in these three regions. Then there are also thematic areas where we find a lot of opportunities for us. A lot of opportunities that again go back to a strong transatlantic link between Europe and America. Firstly, this is one perhaps specifically faced by Bulgaria but something that everyone in Europe will very easily understand and this is the issues of energy security and diversification. Of course, America has its own challenges or had its own challenges on this front but we face our own difficulties. I think that no country should be 100% reliant on its energy supplies on one other country and it doesn't matter which these two countries are. This is just not healthy. It is not politically healthy. It is not healthy. Security-wise, it is not economically healthy. And we face now the need to diversify and to develop opportunities through which our country can be much more integrated into the energy networks with our neighbors, with Greece, with Turkey, with Romania, with Serbia but also to focus on key projects like Nabuco. A project that to our government we believe is one of the key projects that can help us reach a diversification of natural resources for our energy sector. And this project again, it cannot be developed without a strong transatlantic partnership, without strong links between Europe and America and without strong leadership. So energy security and energy diversification, these are issues that we face domestically but are also issues that have relation to the new strategic concept of data. I think that if somebody switches off the gas and a few allies within NATO end up in the middle of the winter with no heating, that is a security concern. And that is something that in our discussions on the new NATO strategic concept, we also need to pay full attention to. It is about Article V and it is about our allied commitment to our territorial security and the security of the alliance. But it is also about Article IV and it is also about consultation between allies and discussions on where we see the threats, how they will emerge and how we will address them. So there are all of these new challenges that we need to face and we can face them. We can face them alone. We are much better facing them together and we will be much more successful. Last but not least, we see now next week we have the NPT review conference in New York which is going to start a long, I'm sure, difficult but hopefully successful process of looking at the new non-proliferation regime. But we see also very quickly how not just nuclear capability but delivery systems can spread much more quickly within regions of instability right now. Bulgaria is already within, along with Romania, Greece and Turkey, within reach of medium-range Iranian rockets. Now, I hope they don't target us. But what does that mean that we must not address the issue of creating both a deterrent and a security environment through comprehensive missile defense for the territories of NATO that would actually give us not just an advantage but it would give us a technological edge to protect ourselves should the worst occur and hopefully it won't. Can we do that alone without America? Or can we do that or can any country in Europe do that alone without its partners? No. And this is why now within NATO we are having a very focused discussion on how the ballistic missile defense should perhaps become one of the missions of the Alliance under Article V. To the countries in the Balkans, to NATO allies in the Balkans, this is a very pertinent question. And developing this system does not mean excluding our friends in Russia. It does not mean that we're creating something that will have a hostile stand towards Russia. On the contrary, it gives us a great opportunity to work with Russia on developing both systems and interacting together politically, literally in protecting ourselves against a threat which is both to us but it is also to them. And this is, I think, where I would like to end because I was a member of the European Parliament, they used to give us there two minutes more, at the most we would get three minutes of speaking time and I'm still not out of the habit of, you know, seeing a microphone and talking for too long. But perhaps where I want to end is to say that for Europe and America to be able to play the role that we all want our community to play around the world but also in its relationship with Russia. We must not just preserve the Atlantic Link, we must also find new leadership across the Atlantic that actually pushes it, which actually develops it forward and makes it much more comprehensive. It goes beyond security, it goes into people-to-people contacts, cultural exchange, educational exchange. It covers the economy to an extent which is far greater than any other region in the world. And we must not just preserve it, but we must develop it. And we all have our domestic agendas. You have healthcare, you have financial services reform, you have or I don't know immigration reform. We have our own domestic agenda. We have to deal with our own healthcare reform. We have our pension reform. We have our energy issues to deal with. In Europe we have all our internal issues to deal with. Figuring out how the new external action service will work. Figuring out how the Lisbon Treaty works. And we can very easily get entangled into our domestic agendas that actually there's more. And that more is what brings us together. And this is the transatlantic relationship. And this is what we need to strengthen. And this demands political leadership and it demands vision for the future. I don't want to live in a world in which the global agenda is set by events that we're, as we were discussing earlier this morning, we're trying to catch up to. I want to live in a world where we actually see events or are able to predict them in advance and design our strategies and design our actions so that we can lessen the threats and increase the opportunities for development. And to this we have the greatest thing that has preserved the unity across the two sides of the Atlantic for 50 years for more than 50 years now which is the relationship between America and Europe and America. And this has been strengthened by the enlargement of the European Union and by the enlargement of NATO. It has brought a new perspective and it has brought a new sensitivity to the problems and the challenges we all face. So what I say is let's take our jackets off what our thinking hats on and actually see how together we can work much more effectively addressing the challenges of the 21st century whether they be in the Balkans or across the Pacific. Thank you. Mr. Minister, thank you very, very much. That was a strong presentation I think articulating the areas where we can work together but I like the end where you're demanding a vision and demanding leadership because I think looking back over the last 65 years of transatlantic relations the focus regionally has been Europe whether during the Cold War post-1989 through the 90s was the Balkans, we were naturally focused transatlantically on Europe but since 2001 we're focusing on Afghanistan Iraq, Iran Pakistan, North Korea these do not lend themselves to the geographical focus that we once had so this requires us to work much harder. Well I have a great pleasure of being a moderator and the other task before me is to keep this meeting on time since we started a little late I think we have about a half an hour for questions and comments and good dialogue and the other task I have is the moderator gets the prerogative of throwing out the first pitch I like to use baseball analogies and then you all can provide the minister with your curve balls your fast balls, your soft balls whatever you prefer and actually has two parts to feel indulged me today's New York Times headline reads as Greek drama plays out where is Europe Financial Times in an op-ed headline says Europe is unraveling although you aren't directly affected by the Greek financial crisis because Bulgaria is not in the Eurozone your interest rates are going up because of it we see Europe struggling with the post Lisbon Treaty institutions whether it's creating the external action service or other institutions but we also see I think I see a leadership crisis in the EU's enlargement strategy Turkey, you mentioned that as part of the Middle East strategy and looking at a forward thinking enlargement strategy for the Balkans is there a political leadership crisis in Europe right now that can overcome these challenges and from a Washington perspective how can we understand this dynamics that's sort of part one totally different direction we saw lots of developments this week in the Ukrainian Parliament with the approval of the extension of the lease of the Black Sea Fleet the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol to 2042 we see perhaps a growing militarization of the Black Sea from a Bulgarian perspective on as the Black Sea is certainly an area of focus what are you seeing and what keeps you awake at night about the Black Sea too easy questions if I can hit a homerun on both of these this will be sorry is there a leadership crisis in Europe if we look at what's happening with Greece I think there's there's definitely a financial crisis in Greece but what many in Europe want to see and happily Prime Minister Papandreou has provided it is a very very firm commitment to the reforms that Greece will undertake this year and next year obviously at great economic and political cost but reforms that are very much needed because it is the credibility of the euro is at stake here and this goes beyond the countries that are in the euro zone it affects us far more actually perhaps than many others because it delays our plans to go join the euro it creates uncertainty as to the investment Greek investments in Bulgaria and it creates many many difficulties in that perhaps there's not a leadership crisis but perhaps there's there's a difference of opinion of how we handle this and I think very slowly but we've come to the point at which the consensus is that the lead should be taken by the Greek government and the lead on these reforms must be based in Greece along with the IMF as Greece needs it but only on Greece's request and based on the plans that Greece develops all of these titles which are Greek drama where is Europe Europe is unraveling Europe is not unraveling Europe is sticking to the rules and sticking to these rules is very important because if you undermine the rules then the effect will become greatly more negative in other countries Bulgaria has had to constrain at great political cost its budget deficit for last year we've managed to finish last year within a 3% deficit we are constraining the deficit for this year as much as we can we're planning also to not go beyond the 4% deficit for this year when I was minister of defense my budget got cut by 30% and that comes at a very high social cost as well but sticking to these rules is very important and we understand clearly that we can't borrow our way out of this crisis we need to weather the storm and we need to make sure that we streamline our processes streamline our institutions and make sure that we are in a for the time when the crisis will be on its way out so there's no leadership crisis in Europe there are different opinions but I think they've all now converged around the fact that we need to help Greece Ukraine and the Lease of the Black Sea fleet wow those pictures from the Ukrainian parliament were dramatic and it is a dramatic issue it is clearly an issue that is divisive in society but I think that overall if we look at the Black Sea in the longer run we need to be very careful how we address questions of military balance in the Black Sea and we need to be careful because it is very fragile it is fragile because of the fact that simply you have at least three extremely large countries you have Russia, the Ukraine Turkey bordering the Black Sea you have two member states of the European Union three member states of the North Atlantic alliance you have Georgia on the other side and this creates a very very delicate situation so in our assessment the decision to ratify the agreement on the Black Sea in the long run might actually prove to have been inevitable for the Ukraine at this point it doesn't mean that we need to that we need to that we need to not be careful enough about how we handle issues of security but we need to be extra extra cautious in how we deal with all of the countries around the Black Sea and this is why I said in the beginning that perhaps you know we focus too much on some areas and not focused enough on other areas there are plenty of things that we can do in maritime safety and trafficking in the Black Sea that we need to address and perhaps by building the trust of nations around the shores of the Black Sea through issues like that through tackling issues like that we will be in a far better position to increase also the stability of our security agenda in the medium run or where we can all agree on Thank you so much please let's take some good questions Margarita please Margarita Sanova Institute for New Democracies Mr. Minister you launched an important initiative with Macedonia for furthering Bulgaria's relations with Macedonia you're going to just copy after this trip do you see a good prospect of signing the agreement and the other thing is the Greek crisis as bad as it is do you think it provides good opportunity for agreement on Macedonia's name by the Greek side now that probably nobody is going to pay too much attention internally in Greece Yes indeed when I finish this trip I fly straight to Skopje for our bilateral discussions with Macedonia and one of the issues which is largely on our table is a treaty which we have proposed to Macedonia a treaty of friendship and good neighbourly relations is there a good prospect for signing that there is if we can both sides can actually for about a week at least stop reading the press and actually focus on the real issues that we need to deal with I say this actually quite with grave disappointment because I fear that our agenda both Bulgaria and Macedonia's relationship has been overcome and has been overtaken by an agenda that has not been set by the politicians but has been set by the media and this is not good what we need to do is recapture that initiative my friend Antonio Milosevsky in Skopje and actually move forward on creating a framework for our bilateral relations that really reflects what people think Bulgaria has over the last 20 years been most helpful and a good friend of Macedonia we were the first country to recognise its independence we helped it during the sanctions on Yugoslavia oil and food into Macedonia we helped during the Kosovo crisis we've done nothing bad with which our friends in Macedonia could complain about yet there's all of this emotional cloud which has developed which we need to get through right now and I hope to be able to do that because we're two countries that live side by side Macedonia aspires to be a member of the European Union and NATO and we have a responsibility to help it join the European Union and NATO and to help it be a stable democracy that contributes to the security of our entire region I wouldn't create a direct link between the Greek crisis and the issue, the name issue which is the bilateral issue between Macedonia and Greece I wouldn't do that because I don't think it's an issue of people not paying attention to it or being diverted to do something else we can squeeze something through a foreign agreement it is a very complex question that is both very profoundly important to Greeks and to Macedonians alike what we have often said and we've said this to our friends in Skopje and our friends in Athens is that we're convinced that there must be a compromise there must be a compromise which is acceptable to both sides because otherwise the opportunities that Macedonia has in front of it with NATO, with the European Union will be made far more difficult than if there is no compromise and honestly I hate to have to continue to use this acronym and to keep reading it because it is embarrassing the 20 years after the end of communism and years after the end of the disentanglement of Yugoslavia we still have one country that uses a former that has a former in an acronym that many of us have to use so we hope that there will be agreement we've seen good signs we've seen positive signs both from Skopje and Athens we need to be very careful now not to upset the balance but both sides also must be very careful Macedonia now has a key position as chair of the Council of Ministers of the Council of Europe and I hope it uses that position to actually advance the opportunities of foreign negotiations with Greece rather than to upset them Thank you, so you had a question for me My name is George Hande I have a question for you regarding your vision for Balkan Cohesiveness As you travel to the different countries will there be some near-term initiatives or areas that you will stress with these countries as priorities to demonstrate the value and the potential for Balkan Cohesiveness and do you see the Southeast Europe Regional Operation Council as being an ally in moving this vision forward? Yes, we have a number of ideas which we will take to our friends in the western Balkans I think I think my own ministry at this point hates me for doing this because I'm you know I've asked them to set up such an agenda that they stay up late at night but it is needed and I think what we will do is what we need to focus on is obviously Macedonia and our bilateral relationship with Macedonia very much focused on the membership action plan decision for Bosnia and particularly before the elections make sure that our friends in Bosnia understand the implications of what we the decision we took in Tallinn hopefully bringing them more in line with various initiatives that exist in the region focusing in Kosovo I'd like to have a very honest discussion with our friends there on how we can not just be helpful to building Kosovo institutions but also in helping Kosovo really live up to the standard of a multi-ethnic society so we have a lot of ideas at this point that we want to put on the table and I hope the reaction to that will be positive I plan once we do this whole trip to also talk to my friends and my colleagues in the European Union and see what we can actually deliver from all of these opportunities that now exist in the western Balkans and what are the real challenges what are the real difficult questions that we need to address the Southeast European Regional Corporation Council is obviously a very useful initiative what I'd like to see is it actually engage more actively in practical projects on the ground projects that actually bring people not just to conferences but to work together on specific networks of expertise that they can develop whether that is in customs or in border security or whether that's on sort of more software issues as well but it is a useful initiative it would not however be able to to politically push the reform agenda as the European Union accession process could and this is the most important tool that we have the stabilization and association agreements with the western Balkans and the prospects that as they meet the criteria these countries can become parts of the European Union I realize very much that now is a very difficult time to talk about these issues in Europe it's a tough time to go back to the enlargement agenda the way it was a few years ago but we must keep a steady pace and as opportunities emerge sees them if we really believe that this is important and this is what I hope that not just Bulgaria but other countries in the Balkans will see and I know that the Greek government and the Slovene government and the Austrians and others are very interested in and seeing how we can keep the agenda alive so that when the opportunities arise we can actually sees them good to see you again Meto Kaloski United Macedonian diaspora you mentioned transatlantic principles and all you know and adhering to all these principles as Bulgaria and American Europe just a clarification point and then a question unfortunately a compromise which our organization does not agree with Greece insists on Macedonia changing its name and its passports and its constitution and its language and identity and what not and claims that Macedonia has territorial aspirations but Macedonia I think that Bulgaria's position is Macedonia is Republic of Macedonia the name is Republic of Macedonia and that will continue to be the name of the country and bilateral reference so the use of an acronym or the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is inconsistent with Bulgaria's position I guess but my main question is really about the Council of Europe and the State Department's Human Rights reports that state that Bulgaria does not recognize a Macedonian minority within its borders so there's a questioning what is your position on that and do you envision the minority being recognized anytime soon thank you Thank you I don't remember using an acronym to refer to Macedonia I think the issues of what and how compromises with Greece can be reached as an issue that is between Skopje and Athens we don't have a we've recognized Macedonia as the Republic of Macedonia and as such we don't have a problem calling it Macedonia and I'm not going to ever call it an acronym so what I would say is that I think but what I think is very important for everyone to understand and this dispute is that I hear often people in Skopje say well we can't compromise because this is our sovereign right and they're right it's the sovereign right of every country to name it to call itself what it wants because that's part of the symbols of sovereignty but it is also the sovereign right of every country to understand that it can also and it must find compromises when the stakes in the future of this country are involved and this is why we've urged both Greece and Macedonia to work very very hard and to work very constructively in developing such a formula which would be acceptable to both sides but would allow Macedonia to progress further in its negotiations with the European Union and NATO and I think this is what is most important the opportunities that exist before the people of Macedonia to develop economically, to develop politically to develop in terms of civil society etc etc to be part of this this community and these are very very hard choices and these are decisions that carry great weight great consequence with them but I hope that the leadership both in Skopje and Athens has the full and understands the full extent of these actions and will soon reach a decision which would be acceptable as far as minorities in Bulgaria let me be absolutely straight about this we do not recognize minorities in Bulgaria because our legal system is based on the fact that people have individual human rights and as individual human rights they develop that they have the right to express themselves or to study or to learn languages or to do whatever it is that they want to express their individual identity our legal system does not provide for minority groups we have a large Turkish population in Bulgaria which is fully integrated into society because they are Bulgarian citizens they're citizens of the country of Bulgaria but we don't know but our legal system does not give them special rights because they're a minority because as human beings they have rights it's not an issue of belonging to a community but it is an issue of being a human being with rights so this is why this is our legal system and I think the issue that is often raised about Macedonian minorities in Bulgaria I'm sorry I'll be very frank about this I think that every time this issue comes up I fear that there's somebody who wants to disturb our relationship with it because we have far more to talk about the opportunities that exist between our countries and the prospects for developing our countries then to focus on these issues so to me that's a non-issue we have a legal system we have a legal process which has spoken clearly on this within the limits and within the framework of our constitution but I'm not going to go to Skopje next week and get entangled into a discussion whether there's this minority or that minority across the border if we're going to do that that means that we don't really understand what Europe is about and what coming together around the commonality of values means I'm not going to get entangled into a discussion of whether Gotze-Delcev is a Macedonian or a Bulgarian hero because I don't remember when is the last time that I heard a French and a German argue whether Charlemagne was a French or a German king this is part of our common history this is part of what we are we are and we carry this with us and we'd be far better advised to look forward than to continuously look backwards it's not a zero sum game, it's not about one side winning and another side losing it's about a win-win situation in which we will all feel more secure we will all have more opportunity if we work if we work together and I think overall in the Balkans we've seen far too many politicians and this has created far too many problems seeing the relationship with a neighboring country whichever that country that is has a zero sum game and it's not this is what the 90s were about let us all grow up thank you we'll have you the last question Catherine Messina-Pietz from NDI nice to see you again Mr. Minister since we're on the topic of minorities I'd like to raise the subject of the Roma community in Europe and that's a community in which Bulgaria has a very strong record of inclusion consistent representation in parliament and government among the first countries in Europe to develop a strategy for greater inclusion and trying to desegregate the schools and so on and so I guess I'd like to just ask what kind of a leadership role Bulgaria can take because the Roma community does face such disproportionate poverty across Europe and we're seeing rising trends in the far right and anti-Roma sentiment throughout Europe and the recent elections in Hungary were one example where it was rather unsettling the kind of rhetoric around the campaigns and what's been happening in Roma community so what can Bulgaria do on that front as a leader in the region I mean Catherine, you know Bulgaria well so you know that it is a very ethnically and religiously tolerant society it is a society which has for hundreds of years had Christians and Jews and Muslims living side by side including during the Second World War where it was actually civil society that helped save our Jewish population for a strong tradition in that however I don't think we should side away from the fact that we also have a community in our country that we have a lot of discriminatory practices towards and this is the Roma community it may not be as bad as it is in other parts of Central and Eastern Europe but it is still there and the fact that we've seen Roma members of parliament rise up within the administration I don't think that resolves the question of large scale poverty lack of educational opportunity and social exclusion if not all large parts of the Roma community in Bulgaria so what I think we need to do is instead of looking towards taking a leadership role in driving a debate across Europe on this we should actually focus a little bit more about at home and continue some of the excellent work which has been done in the past and also find other ways of providing more opportunity to our Roma communities and then maybe serve as an example because the problems communities across Europe face are very similar actually they're all and they're cross sectoral it's not an issue of saying just social policy or just educational policy these are cross cutting issues across various sectors of society and across countries it is a worrying trend what we're seeing with this rising sentiment if you look at it historically always accompanies some sort of a financial economic crisis so we must find at a European level a way of addressing this and I think the anti discrimination centre in Vienna I don't remember its full name and also has a nice acronym to it is a key tool for this the European Commission when I was in the European Parliament together with some other colleagues we wrote a letter to the Slovenian at that point, Presidents asking for a commissioner that would have a part of their portfolio responsibility for Roma problems around Europe but as far as Bulgaria is concerned I think we should look a little bit more carefully at what we do at home before trying to leave the debate on this well let me begin by saying after I think you hit a home run if we're going to keep that baseball analogy going you did, knocked it out of the park thank you so much, excellent questions from our audience thank you for being with us this morning and on behalf of CSIS Mr. Minister, thank you for sharing your insights with us it was a very stimulating discussion and have a wonderful day and a fantastic weekend the weather is going to be great so enjoy it thank you very much