Bulgaria to join euro area on 1 January 2026

Two things that surprised me when I spent a couple of months in Bulgaria:

* Bulgarian support for the EU is pretty low and people didn't think it made their life much better

* Bulgarian support for Russia is very high, like 50%, probably due to their historic help in kicking out the Turks

Also the experience of Greece not too far back and the austerity imposed by Germany is not quite forgotten. Varoufakis[1] can attest to its severity. The Greeks voted against it but Germany imposed its will.

[1]https://jacobin.com/2025/07/yanis-varoufakis-on-the-legacy-o...

And yet, Greece recovered to become a leading economy in the region. The propaganda is strong on the airwaves these days, just like in the US, one shouldn’t react to “facts” taken out of context.

It seems (from here), support for Russia is somehow magically going down as Russia’s economy is having trouble paying for its “support” abroad.

In which region is Greece a leading economy?

> And yet, Greece recovered to become a leading economy in the region

I don't think that's true ... growth is good, but that's because there's a lot of catching up to do. If I remember correctly (and maybe I don't) then real GDP is still like -20% vs 2007, debt is EU-leading at like 150% of GDP, unemployment remains high, and wages remain low.

This is a very distant view for the reasons behind the crisis in Greece and for sure the government of 2015 was not a victim. In the context of this thread, Bulgarians as Greeks before them, enjoy the money from the EU but don’t like the responsibility that comes from it, to reform, to also contribute and that you lose the own currency perks while you gain on other fronts. Of course there is a lot more here to discuss but this is my experience being a Greek in Greece.

In a region composed of Greece, North Macedonia and Cyprus.

You know, there's Greece and Portugal. Mentioning these two as they got Troika following them.

Portugal managed to get out of the storm, and debt is now below GDP.

Greece took many bad steps trying to recover. And its debt shows that. Their governments have had a big part of the blame. Hell, at one point they didnt have enough money for citizens to withdraw from banks.

And that was before Troika.

This is nonsense. Not mentioned is that Greece has borrowed excessively and had defaulted on its loans. A bailout was organized by the EU and IMF with terms that Greece had every opportunity to reject. No one forced anything on Greece. The referendum was not binding and political theater for the government of the time.

That Greece accepted the terms reflected the reality that the alternative was much worse and would have caused great suffering for Greeks.

Doesn't sound right https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_...

Cyprus ranks 17th and Greece 32nd

100% true.

What choice did Greece have? Germany was not extending favorable terms, they were punitive, so what choice did they have but take the least awful choice? Syriza tried but Germany had the upper hand and of course didn't give an inch --though Syriza tried very hard.

Varoufakis would argue the severe terms imposed by the creditors/negotiators exacerbated the fiscal issue. Yes Greece had issues but the creditors's terms exacerbated the problem, made things worse.

It's kind of like borrowing from a loan shark to pay off debts --on average, you're better off not. But hey, once you take it, you either pay up, or you lose something dear to you.

It’s also more of a generation thing though. The older people are nostalgic about the past and their youth and for a country that experienced 2 decades of very low birth rates that’s the 70s and 80s and those years are under the communist rule and very good years for Bulgaria as the country was experiencing economic boom from computers and electronics manufacturing.

Also, under under the Communist rule supported by USSR, they indoctrinated people into a version of history that Turks are the absolute evil, and Russians are the absolute angels saving them from the ottomans.

I.e. in pre-EU era it was called Ottoman slavery, later they start calling it Ottoman era as it was more accurate as Ottoman’s system was based on collecting taxes and resources from the conquered places when giving them plenty of autonomy. Obviously not ideal but far from slavery.

> And its debt shows that. Their governments have had a big part of the blame. Hell, at one point they didnt have enough money for citizens to withdraw from banks.

Sure but so do the creditors. If you keep giving mortgages to anyone with a drivers license that's on you buddy.

At almost no point is there enough money for citizens to withdraw their money. Modern banks don't keep their assets as cash.

Unless you were Armenian.

The government was not the victim in deed. But up until today you can see the results amongst the population. You can Prune for growt or you can just cut the plant to the ground hoping it will survive.

Not at all, Armenians were also an integral part of the Ottoman society and that’s how you still have plenty of Armenian cultural heritage dating back to Ottoman times in modern Turkey. You must be referring to the events around WW1 that led the loss of huge numbers of the Armenians through atrocities committed by the Ottomans which some say that it was a genocide, others say it was poorly managed suppression of a rebellion in a dying empire. Still unresolved issue unfortunately.

On the other hand Bulgarians and Turks teamed in wars after the forming of the new Bulgarian state.

Bulgaria economy and the average citizen quality of life are not that correlated. You can have one improving while the other is deteriorating. We saw what happened in the US when such a gap became wide enough.

And if the people vote against the EU in the referendums, one's authorities just kinda look the other way.

For anyone who is new to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_French_European_Constitut...

By many metrics (life expectancy, inequality, literacy, poverty rates) the US is a third world country.

Even grok would call you out on this.

>that Turks are the absolute evil

Devshirme, Janissary corps, Batak massacre? There is huge blood debt that is owed to the Balkans and Armenia by the Ottoman Empire and their successor states.

No, it really isn't. Although there are some pockets of poverty that come close.

Tell me about an empire who conquered and held conquered land through asking politely. If you are able to come up with any, Ottomans certainly were not among those sure. That's why people don't like being invaded by empires. What do you think the first and the second Bulgarian Empires did exactly?

BTW Just like the way Bulgarians may not recognize that the Bulgarian Empire had a military and killed people in order to take others stuff and force them into things they wouldn't do unless defeated through slathering each other, Turks also tend not to understand that institutions like Devshirme or Janissary weren't liked by the people subjected to those.

For example In their mind Devshirme was an education program that gave the opportunity to minority children to have great careers and indeed that was the result(they don't think about how those kids were taken into the program).

Similarly Janissary were elite units with lots of sway in the administration, in their minds Janissaries were spoiled soldiers that are hard to satisfy.

Also, all the wives of the sultans were women from minorities. In the Turkish mind they were lucky women with a lot of influence on the empire. An entire genre of soap operas are made around this and they are very popular in the countries that used to be under the Ottoman rule. Including Bulgaria.

Rich people in 3rd world countries do very well.

> If you keep giving mortgages to anyone with a drivers license that's on you buddy.

Isn't this the USA system?

> poorly managed suppression of a rebellion

Or a too well managed suppression.

“ We have been blamed for not making a distinction between guilty and innocent Armenians. [To do so] was impossible. Because of the nature of things, one who was still innocent today could be guilty tomorrow. The concern for the safety of Turkey simply had to silence all other concerns.”

> others say it was poorly managed suppression of a rebellion in a dying empire

I don't think many say that at all outside of Turkey/Azerbaijan/Pakistan.

Oh of course. This doesn't invalidates the bad blood. This doesn't mean that I would be sad if Turkey is humiliated and Hagia Sofia becomes once again orthodox church once again. And Istanbul is renamed to Constantinople.

So, you're describing war? The Russians are doing that to Ukraine right now too btw.

> to become a leading economy in the region.

Leading compared to what, Romania and North Macedonia?

> support for Russia is somehow magically going down

I don't think support for Russia was ever notably involved in the whole clusterfuck regarding the Greek economy.

The bad blood doesn't make sense, it was an age of the Empires and it was all business and Ottomans didn't do anything particularly different than everyone else did so I don't think that it is fair to say that Ottomans were evil. If anything, under Ottoman rule despite the atrocities minorities kept their language and culture unlike the people subjected to Western imperialism in Africa or Americas. One can even argue that Ottomans were relatively gentle.

Let's hope that we never go back to these days. Imperialism is evil and I'm sorry that Erdogan and other autocrats are trying to revive those days. I also agree that it was very offensive for the christians to turn Hagia Sofia into a mosque again(was a museum till recently) and I would love to see it becoming a church again.

Also, let's stop renaming stuff. If you like Istanbul you can move to Istanbul, if you want to own istanbul you can purchase a property in Istanbul.

True, I'm also inclined to believe that it started as a suppression attempt that ended up being a genocide as "an easy solution" to make a problem go away as the dying empire wasn't able to contain it.

I recall reading the communications of some Ottoman officials trying to cash out the life insurance policies of the Armenians. Pure evil, honestly.

Could be, I agree. I'm inclined to believe that it become a genocide once the incompetent administrators failed to address the core reasons and thought that it would be easier to make these troubles go away by killing everybody.

Greece was sacrificed so eurozone (especialy Germany) could hide recession by bailing out banks (through bailing out Hreece). Greeks know and believe this. That makes their relationship with EU quite complicated.

It was disqusting treatment from EU which needed to hide its own recession and blame a culprit.

Every other european media outlet talked about greeks (in very racist way) as lazy nation that doesnt want to work.

Not great look for EU. But i dont know about better alternative.

Yep, and if Ottoman empire did evil things, Russian empire wasn't historically any better. At least Turks mostly stay inside their own borders these days, while Russians haven't changed one bit.

Greece underreported its debt until 2009: i.e. it borrowed too much while lying about how much it's already borrowed. That's the main difference between Greece on the one hand and Italy, Portugal on the other, in my eyes. Italy and Portugal too suffered a public debt crises, but they weren't so blatant about it. I sympathize with the common Greek man, and I wish their crises had been managed with more success, but I also don't feel especially interested in bankrolling Greek policies that led to this crises.

Bulgaria has an internal coherence problem. There are brilliant people but also many who believe bullshit communist fairytales.

1. Many people have unrealistic expectations. In reality, no one is coming to save you, and 99% of the time, you need to save yourself.

2. The Russian propaganda story was taught in schools from 1945 to 1990 and beyond. When I was in elementary school in the 90s, it was still taught by inertia. I would bet it's still taught today, 2025 (!), in some shape or form. Yes, Russian actions in the late 1800s had the side-effect of liberating Bulgaria, but by all historical accounts, that was bound to happen since the Ottoman Empire was falling apart.

The most significant action taken by Russia (the Soviet Union) was the occupation of Bulgaria following World War II. The resulting communist regime initially jailed or killed any person who dared speak against it. This is not commonly taught or talked about in the country, even today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Court_(Bulgaria)

Credentials: I am Bulgarian.

In that sense the Holocaust was also the "easy solution" to "make the problem go away" when deporting Jews (and other minorities) became too much of a hassle for the Nazis.

They didn't start with the idea of "let's kill everyone", it built up from the 1930s process to deport "undesirables", when it became too much work they decided to kill everyone instead.

Genocide is genocide, doesn't matter the seed that started it.

You must be American. Only Americans hate their country that much.

You are just plain wrong.

Also, social mobility is preferable to inequality. Inequality is terrible on many levels.

Everyone is poor – low inequality (1)

Everyone is middle class – low inequality (2)

Many poor, few rich – high inequality (3)

Theoretical cases, not observed in the real world:

Few poor, many rich – high inequality (4)

Everyone is rich – low inequality (5)

The metric of "inequality" only scores well with either poverty (1) or average outcomes (2) in the real world. Is that socialism or communism? I forget.

> The resulting communist regime initially jailed or killed any person who dared speak against it.

That's whole modus operandi of russians entire 20th and 21st century. Really, a cancerous mole that wants to spread at all costs across the face of whole Europe, and the only thing it understands is the rule of stronger dog fucking the rest without a care.

I've grown up in communism too albeit a bit more north, a whole nation enslaved for more than 4 decades by russians. The scars this oppression had left on the soul of my nation are still very visible these days and not going away anytime soon. That depraved nation never even acknowledges atrocities it was doing and still keeps doing on a daily basis.

The saddest part they were very actively shooting/electrocuting people that were just trying to escape to the west, just to show to the rest of population its not worth dreaming of freedom in any way. A milder North korea. I guess dictator's playbooks are very similar everywhere.

Sure, nazis even called it “the final solution”.

The difference is that the the ottomans didn’t have an anti-armenian culture going on and the Ottoman rule wasn’t being legitimized over stuff like “fighting a war against sleazy Armenians who infiltrated us”. It was quite the opposite, with rise of the nationalism in Europe minorities in the empire were the “anti”.

Ottomans didn’t do that because they believed in the inherent evil of the Armenians but because they were responding to those nationalistic movements. The distrust towards Armenians developed with the rebellions that were supported by Russia etc. Armenians weren’t targeted for their Armenianness. In other words none of this would have happened if there were no rebellions. It was done to address a specific problem, can you say the same for the holocaust? Was Hitler trying to address actual troubles that the Jewish minority caused?

Do you know who were/are targeted? The Alawites, it about the people would say things similar things like an anti-semite would say for the Jews. It’s also how you get instantly cancelled in Turkey.

Luckily something like this will never happens today, especially in a civilized country.

Not just the USA system. EU and especially German banks gave plenty of credits to Greek banks, knowing that they will probably spend it on German products, even if they have not much means to repay them. Plus, the EU knows full well that if Greeks overspend they can easily be pressured into austerity.

This went swimmingly for everyone involved, with Greece now in more debt than ever (debt went from 145.45% of GDP to 209.40% of GDP). And fascist parties going from virtually non-existent to mainstays.

Adding low-efficiency countries like those in southeastern Europe is great for the EU's major exporter - Germany, because it adds more customers who have Euros, and because it devalues the Euro, which means more exports. Better yet, because of Euro the new joiners can't devalue their currency and get their exports high enough to restart the economy, with only viable option being more in debt and/or leaving for Germany, while obliterating the local industries. Win-win-win. For the EU exporters.

So, yes, let's celebrate Bulgaria joining Hotel EU, where food is great, your bill grows exponentially, but you can't ever leave. By the end you'll just end up as a pool boy.

I don't think a "third world country" or "developing country" mean anything any more. Turkey/Istanbul and Congo/Kinshasa are both developing countries/cities. One has issues but functional transportation, water/electricity, acceptable healthcare, etc. and the other is a literal shit-hole. The term was invented very long ago and now is no longer applicable.

Edit: Also third-world country mean something else completely since Turkey is first-world by original definition.

So true. The weirdest part is that so many non-Americans think the same about America whilst simultaneously lining up to legally or illegally immigrate there.

> Still unresolved issue unfortunately.

The Armenian genocide is very much a resolved issue. No serious historian denies the genocide any more than he denies the holocaust.

> Tell me about an empire who conquered and held conquered land through asking politely. If you are able to come up with any

This is not what it's about. It's not about the Turks being evil and Bulgarians et al being angels. It's about the fact that Turks refuse to accept responsibility.

Let me give you an example. I'm Romanian. There are many uneducated folks you'll meet in Romania who deny we killed hundreds of thousands of Jews in WW2. But no serious politician, historian, public figure, or educated person denies that.

The same is not true in Turkey. Pretty much everyone denies the Armenian Genocide.

All of us have shameful periods in our history, but some of us at least have the decency to not deny it.

But, of course, how could you see the genocide as evil when you can't even come to grips with the older Devshirme, a practice where boys were abducted, mutilated (circumcision), forced converted to Islam, executed if they were found praying to Jesus, and trained to fight and kill their own countrymen.

I'm not quite sure about that. Romania is bigger because it has a bigger population, but look even at this GDP per capita comparison with Romania.

    Greece: 31695 (2008), 25756 (2025), 31014 (2030, projected)
   Romania: 10435 (2008), 21421 (2025), 28809 (2030, projected)

It won't be until 2030 that Greece will recover, and I'm pretty sure it's slow growth is because of its huge debt because of the euro.

Rich people do well everywhere

I dunno. Pretty sure creditors aren't innocent little old ladies. They're financial killers and knew the situation but also knew they had Germany and the Troika behind them to save them if things went south (as they did). It was win-win for them. The economy miraculously grows: win! the economy sours: win!