President Georgi Purvanov, responding in an newspaper interview to the complaints of the Bulgarian medics freed from captivity in Libya a year ago that they now feel frustrated and neglected at the lack of support for them from Bulgaria’s authorities, said that many Bulgarians faced dire circumstances and hinted that extra special treatment for the medics was not in order.

Indeed, it is clear that many Bulgarians are struggling. The indolence and incompetence that led to the harsh criticisms in the European Commission report are not confined to the ministries and state institutions reviewed by the report. Others in authority seem to display a similar lack of caring for the people of Bulgaria.

Yet implying that the medics should now just get on with their lives hardly seems appropriate. Other Bulgarians may be in dire straits, it is true, but they did not spend eight years as the victims of the institutionalised insanity that is Libya and as victims of the diplomatic inadequacies of a succession of Bulgarian governments.

Suffering all those years in Libyan jail cells, the medics must have fantasised about their freedom in Bulgaria. It is sad that the reality they have come back to has been to share the experience of neglect and inefficiency on the part of institutions meant to serve the people of this country.