(nc) Bulgaria and Romania both joined the European Union on 1 January 2007. We wanted to know more about their stony way back to Europe after decades of Soviet influence and the benefits that EU membership has finally brought to their societies. We asked two former defence ministers, one Romanian, the other Bulgarian, to give us their point of view.
At the end of the war, Romania became, against its will, part of the Soviet sphere of influence. After the cold war, when the Soviet Union disintegrated, Romania and the other former communist states were offered a window of opportunity to join the European and Euro-Atlantic institutions, guarding themselves against a Russian comeback.
From the very beginning, Romania’s aim has been to join both NATO and the EU, which we did in 2004 and 2007, considering them two facets of the same coin, with NATO offering access to security and the EU to prosperity. Consequently, Romania applied for membership to both organisations immediately when that became possible.
Therefore, Romania valued the two equally, even when, at the beginning of the 2000s, some were asking us to choose between the two in the context of disagreements regarding the intervention in Iraq. It was as if a child had been forced to choose between their parents.
Obviously, the requirements for EU admission were more complex and left a larger imprint on Romanian society, given the complexity of the EU compared to NATO, which is a political-military alliance.
Fulfilling the acquis helped Romania make major changes in its society, thus strengthening both its democratic system and its market economy. Romania’s GDP has increased from €97bn in 2006 to a projected €350bn for 2024. Spending almost 20 years within the EU has helped Romania to become a reliable member of the organisation, as it has become one in NATO too.
However, one cannot say that Romania, and Bulgaria too for that matter, have been fully integrated into the EU from the beginning. For a long period, they were subject to the Mechanism for Cooperation and Certification (CVM), lifted not long ago, while full admission to Schengen has been denied at the time of the writing.
It should be said that such differentiation in status between Romania (and Bulgaria) and the other members, together with EU insistence in imposing some issues seen to affect the traditional values of the society, have been skillfully manipulated by Russian propaganda, as proven by the current presidential and general elections.
Consequently, at the time of the writing, in the middle of the current elections, the main narrative propagated by the Romanian so-called sovereignists is that “the west has humiliated Romania”, while its “leaders have not been negotiating properly”, calling to “take back our country”!
Unfortunately, the mainstream parties were slow to recognise both the threat of such narratives, as well as the changes within the electorate (the “TikTok generation” has replaced the mature, rural electorate dominating all this time), so that the situation we face now is more complicated than anticipated, requiring extra effort to resolve.
It is not possible to fully understand the importance of the European Union’s enlargement for the countries of central and eastern Europe without putting it against their post-second world war geopolitical and socio-economic background.
Like most of these countries, Bulgaria became a victim of the postwar geopolitical deals struck by the allies with Stalin, falling on the wrong side of the Yalta divide. Being part of the Soviet empire tore the country and its people from the rest of Europe where it historically belonged, behind the barbed wire of what was proudly called the socialist camp. That “camp” absorbed the economy, which was completely nationalised, including agriculture, while industrialisation was carried out on Soviet rails.
Bulgaria did not have Soviet troops on its territory but took arguably the heaviest individual share of the Warsaw Pact defence burden. It became the most militarised country in Europe, tasked to fight and possibly prevail over Greece and Türkiye. 3,200 main battle tanks, hundreds of combat aircraft, thousands of armored vehicles and artillery pieces and a significant missile force, potentially with nuclear capabilities under Soviet control – all this lost its purpose and value with the end of the cold war.
A huge loss of human effort and material resources paid for by the Bulgarian people as a result of geopolitical misfortune became only too obvious.
The geopolitical choice to rejoin Europe was unequivocal, although Bulgaria ran behind its former Warsaw Pact central European partners, being outside the immediate German neighbourhood, and importantly, behind the flames of the Yugoslav wars, which obscured the geopolitical horizon of the major European Community (EC) players at the time. A decade of embargos and sanctions over neighbouring Yugoslavia badly affected Bulgaria’s socio-economic development.
A reformist, pro-western government had the first full four-year term between 1997 and 2001 and laid the foundations for the practical integration of the country in NATO (2003) and the EU (2007), together with Romania. The overall effect of the geopolitical repositioning of the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) countries, including Bulgaria, within the EU and NATO brought immediate and long-term benefits not only for the new members, but for the larger European and Euro-Atlantic family from every perspective.
It dramatically increased the geopolitical weight of the EU, enlarging its territory by about a quarter (4.2m sq km), its population by a sixth (450 million), also contributing to the two-fold expansion of the EU economy (€19.4tn). The specific benefits of EU enlargement include economic growth, regional development, political stability and democracy, free movement, human rights, the rule of law, and last but not least, cohesion and solidarity.
In summary, joining the EU was a net positive and benefited Bulgaria and its allies as well.
The aggressive war waged by the Russian Federation against Ukraine brought to the fore the importance of a stronger European defence within NATO and especially the role and place of the countries of the eastern flank of the Alliance. The need for a stronger EU role within NATO, the appointment of a new EU Commissioner for defence and space, and decisions to strengthen the EU defence industrial base are a clear recognition that security and defence will be a focus of EU priorities for the years to come.
Bulgaria’s defence industry, especially in the large calibre ammunition niche, is among the biggest in the EU, being currently a major contributor to the Ukrainian and overall allied defence effort. New partnerships would bring higher efficiency, resilience and technological advances of the industry across the EU to meet the challenges of increased demand in the foreseeable future.
The CEE members of the EU (and NATO), Bulgaria included, along the entire potential line of conflict from the Baltic to the Black Sea, are bound to take a disproportionate share of the risks and the respective defence burden. Their security interests demand that they should have an adequate role and place in the shaping of the inevitable current and postwar security arrangements in the region.
