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Bulgaria:Bulgaria's Most Important National Events in 2012

2 min read Source: Novinite

From our news archive: this article was published in December 2012. Figures and rules may have changed since.

  1. The July 18 terrorist attack at the Sarafovo Airport in Bulgaria's Burgas, aka the Burgas Bus Bombing

  2. Natural disasters – the May 20 6.0-magnitude earthquake in the western Bulgarian city of Pernik and Sofia and the flooding in the village of Biser

  3. The decision of Bulgaria's Borisov Cabinet to terminate the project for the construction of the Belene Nuclear Power Plant, and the ensuing scheduling of a national referendum on the construction a second NPP

  4. Civil society protests at Eagles' Bridge in Sofia and the so called "Tomato Revolution" – against ACTA, Bulgaria's Forestry Act, the extraction of shale gas, corruption, as well as other protest rallies by environmentalists, mothers, scientists

  5. Scandals in Bulgaria's judiciary around the election of a new Supreme Judicial Council (VSS), and a new Chief Prosecutor as well as the dismissal of judge Miroslava Todorova that led to strong criticism by the EU

  6. Crisis with the appointments to Bulgaria's Constitutional Court over the contradictory and failed nominations of judge Veneta Markovska and then prosecutor Galya Gugusheva.

  7. The referring by journalists to the European Commission of the so called "dark past" of Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov based on the leaker secret US diplomatic cables from the US Embassy in Sofia published by WikiLeaks.

  8. Bulgaria's decision against scheduling a date for the start of Macedonia's EU accession talks following the anti-Bulgaria hysteria in Skopje, including the notorious feature film "The Third Half".

  9. The adoption and application of an all-out smoking ban in public places in Bulgaria

  10. The death of Bulgarian Patriarch Maxim and the scramble among the Bulgarian Orthodox Church bishops about who should succeed him.

International Events of Greatest Important for Bulgaria in 2012

  1. Subsiding of the euro zone and EU crisis

  2. Reelection of Barack Obama as President of the USA

  3. Election of Vladimir Putin as President of Russia once again

  4. Election of Xi Jinping as leader of the Chinese Communist Party

  5. Escalation of the civil war in Syria against the regime of Bashar al-Assad

  6. Confrontation in the Middle East that might lead to war over the Iranian nuclear program

  7. Attempts to arrest WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange who believes that leaked secret US diplomatic cables must be recognized as evidence in court

  8. Postponement of the enlargement of the Schengen Area, which means putting off the accession of Bulgaria and Romania indefinitely

  9. The 2012 Summer Olympics in London

  10. Launch of the construction of the South Stream gas transit pipeline and downsizing of its competitor Nabucco

Originally published by Novinite.