Structural changes within the Interior Ministry and the Cabinet’s healthcare policy are expected to be on the busy agenda of the leaders of the three ruling parties at their May 10 to 11 meeting in Bansko. 

The Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), the National Movement for Stability and Progress (NMSP) and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) will discuss the “updated” governance programme of the Cabinet and the need for structural changes within the executive branch, the Government press service said, with the onus being on “social welfare, health policy, justice, interior issues, crisis management, economy and finance”. The weekend meeting will be attended not only by the leaders of the three parties – Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev (BSP), Simeon Saxe-Coburg (NMSP) and Ahmed Dogan (NMSP) – but by all 18 Cabinet ministers and 149 MPs of the three parties.
The meeting will be in deep contrast to what the three parties discussed and agreed at their previous meeting on February 9 and 10 in Hissarya when the main topics were the energy sector, privatisation issues and duty-free shops.

Another difference between the two meetings is that the one in Bansko comes two-and-a-half weeks after Parliament approved the Cabinet reshuffle, which saw the replacement of four ministers – Interior, Defence, Health and Agriculture – and the addition of a deputy prime minister without portfolio in charge of supervising the spending of EU funds.

The one thing both meetings have in common, however, is the criticism Bulgaria received from abroad. The Hissarya meeting was dominated by European Commission criticism on duty-free shops, while the Bansko one will take place after Bulgaria was cited in a US department of justice report as an example of how organised crime corrupted public officials. The Bansko meeting also comes a month ahead of the EC interim report on the progress Bulgaria has made in implementing justice reforms.

In light of all that, the ruling parties will have to discuss structural changes within the most “debated” ministry in the past three years – the Interior Ministry. It was the row around the ministry and the now former minister Roumen Petkov that led to the Cabinet changes in the first place and one of the tasks given by Stanishev to new minister Mihail Mikov was to achieve structural reforms. From the messages Mikov has been sending to the media, it became clear that the ruling parties will have to discuss changes in the ministry's chief directorate for combating organised crime (CDCOC).

Ahead of the Bansko meeting, Stanishev met Mikov, who previously was BSP floor leader in Parliament. CDCOC would undergo substantial changes, Mikov told reporters after the meeting. His idea was to have CDCOC answering to “one central body”. He did not say what this “body” was going to be, but said that CDCOC had to have a “certain level of independence”. Stanishev said that CDCOC’s results in fighting organised crime were less than people expected of it. 

Another change discussed by the two officials was the creation of a separate unit that would control the use of special surveillance methods. The idea came from Petkov in his last days as a minister, when Stanishev asked him to prepare a report on the ministry’s work over the past 18 years.

The lack of efficient control over the ministry’s policy on who was going to be put under surveillance was acknowledged as a major problem not only by Petkov, but by President Georgi Purvanov as well.

On May 6, Mikov threw his support behind Petkov’s idea and gave it a name – agency on special intelligence methods. The agency will combine the work of two of the ministry’s existing units in charge of surveillance works. Mikov wanted to keep the agency within the ministry, in contrast to media speculation in the past two weeks, which gave the agency a place equally distanced from the Justice Ministry, the General-Prosecutor’s Office and the State Agency for National Security.

All these ideas will have to go through Parliament and included in a bill amending the Interior Ministry Act, which is currently being discussed. To do this, Stanishev and Mikov will need a disciplined majority in Parliament and the support of the the NMSP and the MRF.

The other main point of discussion on May 10 and 11 in Bansko will be the Cabinet’s social policy. On May 1, Stanishev told participants at a concert dedicated to Labour Day that the Cabinet had done a lot for businesses in the country and that it was now the time for businesses to do something for the people.

His main message, however, was to the pensioners that made the biggest part of the almost 3000 BSP supporters at the concert. On May 5, Stanishev said that one way to improve pensioners’ situation was for the Cabinet to raise the mandatory health contributions from six to eight per cent. “Even if we increase the health contributions to eight per cent, it would be done in a way that will not increase the burden on taxpayers,” Stanishev said, without specifying exactly how this would be achieved.

Stanishev delivered his message during a surprise visit to Pirogov emergency hospital, accompanied by newly-appointed Health Minister Evgenii Zhelev, who on the second day after his appointment said that the Cabinet had to be more generous in its spending. They announced that salaries of all Pirogov’s employees would be increased by 30 per cent starting May 20. This was going to raise the average salary paid to doctors to 1500 leva, while the average salary for nurses would increase to 800 leva.

All other employees in the health sector would receive a 15 per cent increase in their salaries starting May 1 and a further 10 per cent increase on July 1. The latter increase applies to everyone working in state-owned companies and institutions as well.