Bulgaria’s interim Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev announced that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had asked him to nominate Ekaterina Zaharieva, a GERB MP, for Bulgaria’s commissioner, according to Euractiv.
On 30 August, Glavchev nominated two candidates for the post of EU Commissioner, becoming the only country to respond to von der Leyen’s request to propose male and female candidates.
The two candidates were Ekaterina Zaharieva, a former minister of justice and foreign affairs, and Julian Popov, a former minister of environment and a fellow of the European Climate Foundation.
On 3 September, von der Leyen met consecutively with Zaharieva and Popov at the Berlaymont, Brussels. In an effort to achieve gender balance in the EU, she formally asked Glavchev to nominate Zaharieva as a single Bulgarian candidate.
Despite the request to nominate a male and a female candidate, Member States have so far nominated 17 male panel members and 10 female members. However, the ratio may change after the European Parliament hearings in mid-October, which promise to be heated.
Nikola Minchev, MEP from “We Continue the Change”, stated that he was disappointed by the development.
Gender balance is important, but even more important are von der Leyen’s policy priorities, and Julian Popov was clearly the right choice. Popov is a staunch supporter of Ukraine, while Zaharieva was involved in [the TurkStream] pipeline project which facilitated Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
Minchev also said Zaharieva’s name was tarnished by a scandal involving the illegal sale of Bulgarian passports to wealthy customers several years ago.
By selling Bulgarian passports, in fact, EU citizenship was sold including to people who seek to undermine our union.
The passport-selling scandal has subsided as VMRO, the Bulgarian National Movement behind the scheme, is no longer in power. Katia Mateva, who made the scandal public in 2018, revealed last week that despite the hard evidence she provided, the State Agency for National Security (DANS) had “buried” the case.
Von der Leyen will announce the full list of her team members and portfolios in the European Parliament on Wednesday.
