Bulgaria would buy two Gowind corvettes, made by French defence firm Armaris, Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev said on July 4, after meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Dnevnik daily reported, quoting Bulgarian news agency BTA.

Stanishev, who is in Paris on a two-day working trip, is also scheduled to sign a memorandum of strategic co-operation, which he said would become the framework for the development of relations between the two countries.

Armaris was picked as the winner in a public procurement tender for four modern warships in 2005, but since then the process has been frozen, with Bulgarian authorities repeatedly saying that the country could not afford the purchase.

An attempt to resurrect the deal was made in October 2007, when Sarkozy visited Bulgaria, but at that point Bulgaria once again declined to exercise the option.

The haste with which Bulgaria has now decided to buy two ships has given rise to speculation that the Government was attempting to secure the good will of France, which took over the rotating presidency of the European Union on July 1, in light of the interim report the European Commission is due to publish on July 23. The report is expected to be highly critical of Bulgaria's efforts to fight organised crime and corruption.