Everybody in Bulgaria see how the political tension in the country is growing every day. The prevailing opinion is that the development of Bulgaria in recent years is not carried out at the required pace and the distance from other countries in transition in the EU is increasing. The main internal retaining factors are:

• Problem business environment, especially for small and medium-sized businesses, where close to the employees work and which creates more than 2/3 of the gross added value. Measures agreed with the government in the framework of the tripartite dialogue are either implemented slowly and half-heartedly, or, as in most cases, are not implemented at all;
• Insufficient transparency and control over public procurement. The feeling is that they are lobbyist-partisans and are being used politically to power a series of “hoops”;
• Corruption is felt everywhere and on a daily basis;
• E-government is desperately late;
• The key energy carriers for each production are priced in a non-market, lobbying, nationally treacherous way;
• The quality of legislation and lawmaking is low and the application of laws is selective.

The list could go on and on, but the most worrying thing is that new sinister practices are increasingly being included:

• Racketeering through the state machine in order to take away business;
• Intimidation through law enforcement agencies for political obedience.

There is a growing sense of the rule of law and security of private property. The reason for this is given not only by the cases known by the media, including Hipoland, but also by bills such as the one for seizing the “dormant shares” and through them – seizing the “awake enterprises”, or the innovations in Ordinance H-18 , through which certain persons would gain real-time access (through enterprise information systems) to know-how, all technological and trade secrets of private enterprises, without any benefit to the fiscal system, accompanied by huge unnecessary costs for business, and placing with inaccurate definitions all in a situation of “always guilty”, etc., etc.

These are the reasons for the unsatisfactory amount of investments in recent years (confirmed by the NSI data on the costs of acquisition of fixed assets, as well as by the BNB data on FDI in Bulgaria). The link is direct – the lack of rule of law and security of property, poor regulation and corruption lead to low levels of investment and hence to lower GDP and living standards and an increase in the gap with other former socialist countries. Both materially and spiritually.

The truth must be told out loud – under such working conditions a significant part of the Bulgarian business leaves the country as a significant part of the population did. Yes, production costs in the EU and the US are higher, but legality is guaranteed. Thus, Bulgaria is losing again – and taxes, and entrepreneurial talent, and future.

Business and all its representatives, employees and workers have equal and inalienable civil rights and responsibilities, including the right to protest and the obligation to maintain social peace. Any interference in business by state and law enforcement agencies regarding the free will for political choice and political action of owners or employees is a crime that should be investigated and punished. For the sake of completeness, we should add – in Bulgaria we agreed 30 years ago that we should finish the party construction in the workplace, which means not only no party organizations in the workplace, but also no controlled voting, as well as bans on protests or forced evictions. at a protest by hired workers. The companies work. Civil and party action is carried out outside the enterprises, respectively the state bodies have no place in the enterprises on the occasion of political appearances of persons related to them.