Irish PM visits

· IRISH prime minister Bertie Ahern is scheduled to arrive on an official visit to Bulgaria on February 11 at the invitation of Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg, the Government press office said on February 8.
During the visit, Ahern will receive the highest Bulgarian honour, the Order of the Balkan Range, First Class, and will have talks with President Georgi Purvanov. Ahern visited Bulgaria in November 2003, before the EU Presidency rotated to Ireland. Thanks to the efforts of the Irish Presidency, Bulgaria completed its EU accession negotiations in early June 2004, closing the agriculture, regional policy, financial and budgetary provisions, competition policy, and other chapters. At the time, Irish foreign minister Brian Cowen described this as “the greatest success of the Union’s Irish Presidency”.

Romanian talks

· PRIME Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg had talks in Sofia on February 8 with Prince Radu of Hohenzollern-Veringen, Romanian Government special representative for integration, co-operation and sustainable development, the Government press office said.
The two discussed European integration and their countries’ future full EU membership. Prince Radu briefed Saxe-Coburg on opportunities for implementation of infrastructure projects and for the pursuit of co-operation between Bulgarian and Romanian urban municipalities on both sides of the Danube.
“I would like to congratulate the Bulgarian Government on its excellent work and the sustainable economic development achieved,” Prince Radu said after talks with State Administration Minister Dimiter Kalchev immediately after the session with Saxe-Coburg.
“Bulgaria and Romania have huge potential for economic progress, and we must take advantage of this and use the River Danube as an area of bilateral co-operation,” Prince Radu said.
Foreigner land purchase debate

· MEMBERS of Parliament’s committee on amendments to the constitution, meeting on February 9, reached consensus on the sale of land to foreigners issue.
All EU citizens will be entitled to buy land in Bulgaria when the country becomes an EU member, the committed decided.
Until Bulgaria enters the EU, the current constitutional provisions will remain in force. When the ban is lifted, a special law will be enacted governing land sales to foreigners.

Dutch deal

· LABOUR and Social Policy Minister Hristina Hristova and The Netherlands ambassador Baroness Henriette van Lynden on February 9 signed an agreement on social security indemnity export, thus providing for the payment of social security indemnities from one of the countries on the territory of the other. Under the agreement, the Netherlands will pay in Bulgaria indemnities for sickness and maternity, for disability of people working on labour contracts, old age indemnity, as well as indemnities to heirs and children. On Dutch territory, Bulgaria will pay only pensions for contributory experience and age, disability, inherited pensions and pensions not related to labour activity. Unlike other agreements, this one comes into force directly after it is signed and entered in the respective registers of the two states, Hristova said. Van Lynden said that the agreement was yet another step in Bulgaria’s development and its preparation for membership in the European Union.

Gender inequality

· BULGARIA is the only country of Central and Eastern Europe without a national gender equality mechanism, said Nadya Radeva, Vice President of the Socialist International Women.
She participated in a discussion on “Gender Equality in the Spirit of UN Millennium Development Goals and the Challenges to the Bulgarian Left”. Radeva said that Parliament had not passed an equal opportunity law and that there was no parliamentary committee dealing with these matters. There was no law against domestic violence, either.

AUBG head quits

· AT a meeting in Washington DC on January 30, the Board of Trustees of the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG) accepted the resignation of AUBG president Dr. Reynold Bloom, the university announced on February 7. Bloom had agreed to continue to perform his duties until the end of the current academic year, the university said.

Radioactive issue

· THE Bulgarian Cabinet decided on February 3 that the products of spent nuclear fuel processing would remain on Russian territory, the Government press office said. The Cabinet approved a draft protocol between the governments of Bulgaria and Russia amending a 1995 agreement on co-operation in nuclear power engineering. The draft protocol allows activities related to the management of high-level vitrified waste to be carried out on an entirely commercial basis without a commitment on Bulgaria’s part to take this waste back.

They shall not pass…

· A TOTAL of four complaints had been lodged at the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry by Bulgarian citizens sent back from the Slovenian border, Bulgarian consul in Ljubljana, Volter Minchev was reported as saying by Focus news agency.
About 3000 Bulgarian citizens were sent back from the Slovenian border in the period between May, 2004, the date that Slovenia joined the EU and tightened control at the Croatian-Slovenian border, and the end of 2004, according to Slovenian interior ministry records. In January 2005, 1604 Bulgarians were sent back from the border, out of a total of 3000 people.