GLOBSEC REPORT: Public Attitudes in Bulgaria - a Severe Lack of Trust


Published Wednesday 2 October 2024 at 10:20

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Not all of Bulgarian society has fully embraced the country’s place in the West yet, but recent GLOBSEC Trends polls indicate that the country is certainly warming up to the EU and NATO. Between 2020 and 2024, Bulgarians’ support for EU membership improved by 7 percentage points, while backing for NATO increased by 15 percentage points. The picture is not perfect, as 73% of Bulgarians agreed with the ‘EU dictate’ narrative in 2024, indicating that concerns about the European Union’s role in Bulgaria remain prevalent.

A broad layer of Bulgarian society remains sceptical about Ukraine. Only the relative minority of respondents from the country said that Russia was the primary culprit for the war, and nearly two-thirds of them sign up to the pro-Kremlin narrative that supplying military equipment to Ukraine provokes Russia and bring war closer to Bulgaria. However, not all is gloomy: More Bulgarians wish to see Ukraine as a member of the EU, NATO or both than as a neutral country.

Questions on democracy were where the truly concerning signs emerged in Bulgaria. The country saw its population go to the polls six times between 2021 and 2024 to elect a new Parliament. The instability of recent governments is one of the key contributors to Bulgarian society’s extremely low level of trust in the democratic institutional system of the country.

This low level of trust is problematic because those who do trust the government or the Parliament in Bulgaria tend to be more pro-West than their peers. This trend is only reversed in the case of the presidency, which is also the most trusted institution in the country among those polled. Rebuilding trust in the government and Parliament by offering stability and long-term vision for the country should be one of the key aims of the Bulgarian political elite to firmly entrench Bulgaria in the Western alliance.

Another key takeaway for Bulgaria is that more focus must be put on civic education in high schools, as Bulgarian respondents having a high school diploma as their highest level of education proved to be the most vulnerable social group in the country to pro-Kremlin narratives.

  

BROD