HOME  |  BULGARIA IN EU - BULGARIA IN FACTS & FIGURES

* A country with spectacular mountains and a coastline on the Black Sea, Bulgaria spreads over 110910 square kilometers with a population of nearly 8 million.

* Under Bulgaria's former king, Simeon II, who was prime minister between 2001 and 2005, the country pressed ahead with market reforms designed to meet EU economic targets.

* Bulgaria was not among the countries invited to join the EU in 2004. However, it signed an EU accession treaty in April 2005 and has been given the green light to join in January 2007. EU officials have set tough entry requirements, reflecting their concerns about corruption and organized crime.

* Another sticking point was the Kozloduy nuclear power plant, which supplies around half of Bulgaria's electricity and earns millions of dollars for the country from electricity exports. Under pressure from the EU, the Bulgarians agreed to shut the two oldest reactors at the end of 2002. Despite Bulgarian insistence that extensive safety improvements have been introduced in recent years, Brussels also demanded that two of the remaining four reactors to close.

* Bulgaria must increase the productivity and competitiveness of its economy to avoid being left behind the rest of Europe after its hoped-for accession to the European Union in 2007.

* Bulgaria's gross domestic product per capita amounts to a mere 26 percent of the average in the first 15 EU member states.

* Productivity is at 30 percent of this average and prices at 40 percent. In the last five years the EU has registered an average growth rate of 1.8 percent while Bulgaria has grown by 4.8 percent.

* Due to its backwardness, Bulgaria has to continue to develop faster than the EU member states in order to catch up, experts said.

* Bulgaria is most often associated in the minds of the foreigners with its famous yogurt, rose oil, folk dances and songs. However, today's Bulgarians prefer to emphasize the virtues build up in the course of the centuries and preserved until the present time, i.e. the pursuit of education, wherefrom the success of Bulgarian students at Olympiads in mathematics, the ambition and achievements of the sportspersons, the tolerance and good relations between the various ethnic groups.

* Bulgaria's EU accession on 1 January 2007 will open up healthy prospects before Bulgarian business such as ensuring access to the European goods' and services' market and removing barriers before transfers of capital and labour resources. To be able to stand up to the overwhelming competition from the common European market, small and medium-sized businesses in Bulgaria will have to introduce large-scale innovation and renovation.

* Among existing members, the biggest fear is over free movement of workers. The accession of the previous eight led as many as 2m people, chiefly Poles, Slovaks, Latvians and Lithuanians, to head west. Could that happen with migrants from the Balkans? Probably not, particularly knowing that some two million Romanians already work abroad, mostly in Italy and Spain.