One Bed, Different Dreams: Pre-Accession Attitudes to EU Membership in the Bulgarian Parliament
One Bed, Different Dreams: Pre-Accession Attitudes to EU Membership in the Bulgarian Parliament

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this article is to present preliminary observations about the position, role and place of Bulgaria as a new EU Member State on the basis of evidence collected from the EU and foreign policy related parliamentary debates. The research looks at the structural and contextual aspects of the elite debate on Europe during the transition period from communism to democracy. The European debates became longer and more popular over time with a greater number of parties taking part in the discussions. There was a shared cross party consensus in favor of EU membership which became goal orientated and technically driven closer to accession. Contextualizing these findings in the post-accession period, it is likely that Bulgarian parties have a clear EU position; the focus in debates is shifted from the objective of EU membership to a range of domestic issues such as immigration, social care and EU funds. Moreover, parties have became bolder in criticizing the EU but Bulgaria remains in the political mainstream supporting the decisions and positions of key EU member countries in European policy making while showing potential to contribute to the development of EU-Russian relations and the assessment of the European nuclear energy policy towards new candidate states.

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