Bulgaria is expected to get a green light from Brussels in June to adopt the euro — but the prospect is unsettling many citizens.<\/p>\n
“If Bulgaria joins the eurozone, it will be like boarding the Titanic,” Nikolai Ivanov, a retired senior official, told AFP at a recent protest calling for the country’s currency — the lev — to be maintained.<\/p>\n
Since January, opponents of Bulgaria adopting the common European currency have launched demonstrations and demanded a referendum on the issue, amid a torrent of disinformation.<\/p>\n
Memories of a 1996-1997 economic crisis that saw 14 banks go bankrupt and hyperinflation of more than 300 percent also resurfaced, fuelling the opposition.<\/p>\n
Several recent surveys showed nearly half of those questioned said they were opposed to Bulgaria joining the eurozone.<\/p>\n
The debate has reignited anti-EU propaganda, and many of those opposed to adoption of the euro have taken to waving Russian flags.<\/p>\n
Bulgaria, which joined the European Union in 2007, is the poorest nation in the bloc.<\/p>\n
And “the poor are afraid of becoming even poorer”, said Boriana Dimitrova, director of the Alpha Research institute.<\/p>\n
That, coupled with a mistrust of institutions after years of instability, has created fertile conditions for the population of 6.4 million to fear economic change.<\/p>\n
That fear has been stoked by some political groups, including the far-right Vazrazhdane party, which called for a new anti-euro rally on Saturday in the capital.<\/p>\n
The country’s pro-Russian president, Rumen Radev, made a surprise announcement in early May also calling for a referendum on the matter.<\/p>\n
This week, he accused the government of not implementing needed measures to allow the “most vulnerable” to withstand the shock of euro adoption.<\/p>\n
– Pro-EU voices struggling –<\/p>\n
A third of Bulgarians faced the threat of poverty or social exclusion last year, according to Eurostat figures.<\/p>\n
People particularly in small towns and rural areas are reluctant to adopt the single currency, with some of them having never travelled abroad and not used to international transactions.<\/p>\n
Disinformation widely shared on social networks claims, falsely, that with the introduction of the euro, “Brussels will confiscate your savings to finance Ukraine”.<\/p>\n
Dimitrova told AFP that Radev was making “a well-calculated political move”, appealing to a disillusioned segment of the electorate.<\/p>\n
But his referendum proposal, deemed “unconstitutional”, sparked an outcry from legal experts, and from Assembly Speaker Natalia Kiselova, who refused to put it to a vote.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, pro-European voices are struggling to be heard.<\/p>\n
“In Sofia and the larger cities, the population — wealthier, better educated and younger — sees it as a logical next step in the European integration process,” Dimitrova said.<\/p>\n
Institutions and banks are already prepared, and the coins’ design has been chosen, with the local two-euro coin showing off the inscription “God protect Bulgaria”.<\/p>\n
But in a sign of the lack of information and a feeling of inferiority that is still widespread in the country, “some people still ask me if the Bulgarian euro will even be valid in France or Germany”, Dimitrova said.<\/p>\n
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