I Do: Bulgaria Goes To the Altar Despite Jitters Over the Euro
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I Do: Bulgaria Goes To the Altar Despite Jitters Over the Euro
BULGARIA
Next year, the poorest member of the European Union, Bulgaria, a Slavic-majority country with deep cultural ties to Russia and formerly one of the most ardent members of the Warsaw Pact, will join the eurozone.
It’s a big but important step, especially now, say those who joined earlier.
“Joining the euro area is the best investment Bulgaria can make in its future,” said European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis, a Latvian. “Given the geopolitical situation in the region and Russia’s war against Ukraine, the euro acts as a shield… Our savings are safe, the currency is stable, and our countries have proven resilient in the face of consecutive economic shocks.”
Bulgaria’s currency, the lev, has been pegged to the euro since 1999, eight years before the country joined the bloc in 2007. Its monetary policy has not been independent for years, say analysts. So the transition to a new currency there is not fraught with the same level of economic peril as, say, Argentine President Javier Milei’s proposal for his cash-starved country to adopt the US dollar.
The euro will help eliminate currency conversion costs, improve price transparency, and potentially give more Bulgarians access to cheaper financing and more foreign investment, say proponents. The country has low debt and 2.7 percent inflation, or 0.1 percent less than the high benchmark for eurozone membership. The transition would also signal how Bulgaria has made progress in its decades-long crackdown on corruption, especially in preserving judicial independence and squashing money laundering.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Rosen Željazkov said the EU’s recent green light for the Balkan country to adopt the euro next year confirmed its progress. “A remarkable day. Another step forward on Bulgaria’s path to the euro… This follows years of reforms, commitment, and alignment with our European partners,” he said on X.
As Chatham House wrote, joining the bloc’s financial union puts euros in circulation, ensuring Bulgarians’ access to solid capital as the US dollar appears poised to lose its status as the world’s reserve currency.
While joining the eurozone will largely be positive in the long run, it nonetheless entails trade-offs, noted the World Economic Forum. For example, Bulgaria must now adhere to eurozone fiscal rules and potentially face more disruption from economic shocks in other eurozone countries. Some observers fear price spikes as merchants and others round up as they convert lev to euros, too, added CNBC.
Within Bulgaria, Eurosceptics and nationalists who often identify with Russia have opposed joining the eurozone, saying it represents a surrender of their sovereignty to foreign bureaucrats. In a May poll, 38 percent of Bulgarians opposed the euro. Only 21 percent wanted to adopt it in January, wrote Yuxiang Lin, a doctoral researcher in Russian, European and Eurasian Studies at the University of Birmingham, in the Conversation.
Meanwhile, thousands of Bulgarians have taken to the streets of the capital, Sofia, and other major cities recently to protest the adoption of the euro and to demand a referendum on the move.
The protesters, led by civic groups and nationalist parties, sang patriotic songs, carried flags of the pro-Russian Vazrazhdane party, and shouted slogans like “Freedom for the Bulgarian lev” and “The battle for the Bulgarian lev is the last battle for Bulgaria,” the Associated Press reported.
President Rumen Radev, who has called for a referendum on the accession date and claimed that Bulgaria’s lack of preparation for the euro may deepen poverty, supports the rallies.
“The protests we’re seeing, the opinion polls, the whole debate over a month now is showing that people want to be heard,” Radev said, according to a report by the public Bulgarian National Radio. “They’re the ones that face the prices which the state obviously can’t cope with.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
Mexico Considering Legal Action Against Musk’s SpaceX
MEXICO
Mexico is mulling taking legal action against billionaire Elon Musk’s space company due to the environmental damage in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas caused by debris from a SpaceX Starship rocket explosion, MercoPress reported.
The country has launched an investigation into the debris and the contamination allegedly caused by the rocket launches across the border in South Texas, and is reviewing the firm’s possible violations of international law to pursue the “necessary lawsuits,” because “there is indeed contamination,” President Claudia Sheinbaum said Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.
She added that Mexican authorities are specifically investigating the environmental impact of the launches on Tamaulipas, which borders southern Texas, according to Agence France-Presse.
The announcement comes more than a week after a SpaceX Starship rocket exploded at the Texas base during a routine ground test, sending a massive fireball into the sky.
Mexican officials said they found rocket debris and metal fragments in Tamaulipas, prompting the state’s governor to call for an inquiry into whether the US-based company had met legal requirements regarding the placement of such launch facilities near population centers.
Authorities had discovered debris on a Tamaulipas beach from a failed Starship launch on May 27.
Observers noted that any legal case would add to a growing list of disputes between Mexico and major US companies.
In May, Sheinbaum announced a lawsuit against Google for changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America for Google Maps users in the United States, following an executive order by US President Donald Trump.
Armenia Arrests Archbishop For Plotting Coup
ARMENIA
Armenian security services foiled a plot to overthrow the government Wednesday, according to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, after authorities detained one of the country’s top religious leaders, the second arrest of that kind in a week, Al Jazeera reported.
Armenian officials accused Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, leader of the opposition movement, Holy Struggle, of planning to overthrow the government with the help of supporters.
Officials added that the group recruited about 1,000 people and divided them into strike groups, each given a task to destabilize the country, such as blocking roads, inciting violence or blocking the Internet.
Galstanyan’s lawyer called the charges “fiction” and said authorities only found smoke bombs that are commonly used at protests in Armenia after searching the cleric’s house for six hours, the Associated Press wrote.
More than 10 other members of the opposition have been detained after police raids were conducted at their homes.
The arrest of Galstanyan underscores an escalating fight between Pashinyan and the Apostolic Church, a conflict that escalated when Armenia lost the region of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan in a 2023 military defeat.
Last year, after Armenia handed over control of multiple border villages to Azerbaijan, agreeing to normalize relations with its neighbor, Galstanyan led large protests demanding the prime minister’s resignation.
Then, in early June, the prime minister pressed church leader Catholicos Karekin II to resign, accusing him of fathering a child despite his vow of celibacy. In turn, the church accused Pashinyan of wanting to undermine Armenia’s “spiritual unity.”
Some, including influential Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, say the church is under attack in the country. After posting a video detailing that accusation, Karapetyan was arrested and accused of inciting a coup.
European Court Condemns France for ‘Discriminatory Treatment’
FRANCE
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Thursday strongly criticized France for “discriminatory treatment” after it racially profiled a Frenchman of North African descent who in 2011 was stopped by police three times in 10 days, France 24 reported.
The court found that the French government had provided no “objective and reasonable justification” for police stopping Karim Touil multiple times in the eastern city of Besançon.
The European court noted it was “very aware of the difficulties for police officers to decide, very quickly and without necessarily having clear internal instructions, whether they are facing a threat to public order or security.”
However, it concluded there was “discriminatory treatment” that the French government was unable to refute. The court ordered France to award Touil around $3,500 in compensation.
The case, unusual in Europe, included six plaintiffs – all Frenchmen of African and North African descent – who claimed they were also racially profiled during identity checks in 2011 and 2012, Radio France Internationale noted.
But while the ECHR ruled in favor of Touil, it found against the five other plaintiffs.
Last year, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International warned that racial profiling was “widespread throughout the country and deeply rooted in police practices.” The groups also said they had filed a complaint with the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
According to HRW, young men who are Black or of Arab or North African origin are often subjected to “abusive and illegal identity checks.”
In 2017, France’s rights ombudsman – an independent institution that works to defend rights – found that a male “perceived as black or Arab” was 20 times more likely to undergo an identity check than the rest of the population.
DISCOVERIES
Avian Street Smarts
While cities are notoriously dangerous for birds, one particular hawk has successfully adapted to urban life and, thanks to a pedestrian crossing signal, has learned to hunt the smart way.
Taking his daughter to school one day, zoologist Vladimir Dinets noticed that the intersection near his house was rarely backed up.
However, if a pedestrian pressed the pedestrian-crossing button, the red light would then last 90 seconds, causing a backup of cars. The button also produced a sound, informing the visually impaired that it is safe to cross.
Dinets noticed that the line of waiting cars stretched back to a small tree with a very dense crown.
“One winter morning I was in my car waiting for the light to change and suddenly saw a Cooper’s hawk (Accipiter cooperii),” Dinets, the author of a new study, said in a statement. “It emerged from that small tree, flew very low above the sidewalk along the line of cars, made a sharp turn, crossed the street between the cars, and dove onto something near one of the houses.”
He found that the hawk was diving to the front yard of a house inhabited by a family that frequently dined outside, leaving behind crumbs, which attracted a small flock of birds – sparrows, doves, and starlings, for example – which, in turn, attracted the hawk.
That meant, Dinets said, that the hawk understood the connection between the crosswalk button’s sound and the growing line of cars, and that it would give it cover to attack prey.
“The bird also had to have a good mental map of the place,” he added. “Because when the car queue reached its tree, the raptor could no longer see the place where its prey was and had to get there by memory.”
The Cooper’s hawk is one of the few birds that has successfully adapted to city life. Still, Dinets says he observed this behavior in one specific bird, not in the entire species.
Cooper’s hawks don’t nest in West Orange, New Jersey, the home of the Dinets. That means the bird was a winter migrant that, in just a few weeks, had figured out how to navigate traffic signals and patterns to hunt.
“Next winter I saw a hawk in adult plumage hunt in exactly the same way, and I’m pretty sure it was the same bird,” wrote Dinets. “The following summer, the sound signal at the streetlight stopped working, and the residents of the house moved out. I haven’t seen any Cooper’s hawks around here ever since.”