For the majority of the Bulgarians to name all of our 18 representatives in the European Parliament (EP) is a sweat job. With great effort the known names can be reduced to 4-5, and mainly to those who are active in the internal political life. For two years - despite their efforts, most of our representatives in Strasbourg seems to have failed to come out of anonymity. And the fog is even more, when it is about their activities.

The 18 were catching the "Shuttle" for Brussels, as they called their weekly flights to the heart of Europe and the European plenary hall. Many of them have several offices in the country where many young people work. And our euro deputies as Levski started crossing the country and teaching us how to become faster Europeans.

On June 7th we are voting for our new representatives in the European Parliament. Although this time they will be one less, their names are not going to be much different from the present. Traditionally our people don’t take the European Parliament very seriously. While the truth points that is a growing part of the legislation will be adopted from this underestimated body and will be implemented in our country as well.

In EP the Bulgarian representatives were divided equally into three groups of five people - in ENP (the deputies from GERB), in the group of the Liberals (4 from MRF and Bilyana Raeva from NMSS) and the Lefts are in PES, and the three representatives of ATAKA remained independent.

Regarding the political line there were sparks mostly between the Socialists and GERB - in direct connection on the route Sofia - Brussels / Strasbourg. The representatives of both groups blamed each other that "slander" and discredit the country before Europe. This was the main refrain in the first year of the euro life of our parliamentarians there. It was transferred in the internal policy - served as an issue of fight for our politicians' when they were incapable to explain the slow reform or negative reports from the EC.

However, during those two years there were also moments of unifying. As one jumped our MEPs, possessed of fair anger (almost as in Homer play) generated from the indecent “work” of the Czech avant-garde artist David Black, who displayed our home as a toilet.

As it was expected our representatives were particularly active in the defence of our medics in Libya - the story ended with a happy end at the last days of July 2007 - several months after this European Parliament started its work. In the beginning of 2009 a prolonged blockade of the border with Greece also provoked the unified action of parliamentarians of different colours.

Unifying point during those two years was also the successful fight for the spelling of "euro" in Cyrillic. They continued with the efforts to remove the excise duty on the Bulgarian rakia. The other national cause - Kozloduy NPP was with different accents. The Rights pressed for more compensation and the Lefts – to be reviewed the decision to its closing. But, after Europe destroyed our hopes to release the reactors again, the Right forgot about their “unifying” cause.

What are the achievements of our MEPs?

The Bulgaria's voice is more heard in the Balkans from the grandstand in Brussels and Strasbourg mostly because of the appearances of the socialist Evgeni Kirilov and Nikolay Mladenov from GERB. The last one made the EP to warn the candidate Macedonia to stop the "language of hate" to Bulgaria.

Kirilov repeatedly put the question of the restoration and maintenance of the Bulgarian military monuments and cemeteries in Macedonia. They joined their efforts on the issue and recently went to in our southwest neighbour to examine the situation. This shown that there is a sense the Bulgarians to be a team, not everyone to fight for his own party and personal merit.

The other "couple" members are the "gas" Atanas Paparizov (BSP) and the "nuclear" Vladimir Urutchev (GERB). They are called this way because of their specific activities. Paparizov is the first Bulgarian Euro deputy appointed rapporteur on the so-called Third Energy Pact in its chapter on the access to gas networks.

The nuclear engineer Urutchev was actively involved on the topic of nuclear safety and nuclear energy in combating climate change.

The Bulgarians knew the women from GERB this year. The names of Rumiana Jeleva, Dushana Zdravkova and Petya Stavreva were mentioned more often. The sociologist Jeleva is called “the man” of Boyko Borisov in Europe. The young lady is already one of the familiar faces of the Right fraction in the EP. She invited in Bulgaria the president of the EPP Wilfred Martens, who returned her gesture, indicating Borisov leader of the Rights in the country. The social issues are the strength of Jeleva.

The former judge Dushana Zdravkova who was first in the list of GERB two years ago, maybe will give the leader place to the ambitious Zheleva. She specializes in the constitutional issues and petitions.

The agrarian Petia Stavreva, despite her youth also was noticed by the Bulgarians. At the beginning of the last year she opened the first Salon of the Bulgarian wine in Strasbourg. Stavreva was very active on the agricultural issues and initiated a meeting between our trade organizations and the chief of the agricultural sector for Europe Neil Parish.

Iliyana Iotova (BSP) was as a warrior in her play in the European Parliament. The former red speaker was a grievous with the Mayor of Sofia and kind to the customer. She urged the European Commission to make a revision of the Capital Municipality for the collection and processing of waste and requested an explanation from the Commissioner Olli Rehn for his assertion that the financial support from Europe in our country is divided under political pressure. Furthermore Iotova was actively involved in the consumer protection, and EP adopted its amendments in their favour.

Her colleagues from the left-wing Christian Vigenin and Marusya Lyubcheva didn’t left in back. The young Vigenin became head of a working group to combat the extreme rights. Furthermore, he worked on the common European policies against the discrimination and for the integration of minorities. He established an annual scholarship “Europe” for Bulgarian students. Fighting the double standards against Bulgaria is his biggest proud. Black Sea was the theme in European Parliament because of Lyubcheva - from the presentation of the Bulgarian Black Sea municipalities to a seminar on environmental problems of the water pool.

The only representative of NMSII Bilyana Raeva except her party loneliness had to "overcome" also Antarctica. The young liberal adopted personally the issue about climate change and took advantages during a working trip aboard on a Norwegian ship with research purposes. Furthermore, thanks to her the price of the electricity for the Bulgarians will not increase dramatically in 2013. Unfortunately she is more recognizable in Brussels than in our country.

The silent Liberals, a Bulgarian group which is called this way because there are less talks about it, but it acts in a wider range - from climate change, regional policy to the EU's relations with Turkey, Mediterranean and Latin American countries and the reform of the World Trade organization. In the group with Raeva are also Prof. Vladko Panayotov, Filiz Husmenova, Metin Kazak and Mariela Baeva. The chemist Panayotov made dozens of legislative proposals related to energy efficiency. Husmenova was rapporteur of her group on the equality between men and women in the EU in 2007.

The members of ATAKA didn’t join any group. The most colourful in his actions was Dimitar Stoyanov. As an Euro observer he became popular with his insults to the Hungarian gypsy deputy Livia Yaroka. He also didn’t miss to complain before his colleagues in Strasbourg that has fallen victim to police violence at home. According the rules of the good tone was his behaviour during the voting of the Charter of fundamental human rights - the stepson of the leader of the nationalist hissed it.

His colleague from ATAKA Desislav Chukolov several months after he became MEP he also became famous for his midnight clash with the police of Rousse in which he bombarded with obscene "praises" the representatives of the order. This may be was his most memorable expression.

The third representative of ATAKA Slavi Binev developed turbulent activity as an europarliamentarist. Often his proposals are well adopted. From all the Bulgarian MEPs Binev has the closer relationship with the chief of EP the President Hans-Gert Pöttering. He repeatedly led our pontiffs in the European Parliament. He organized two seminars in Brussels for the dialogue between cultures and religions.

Worked on the topic: Mariela BALEVA Albena BACHVAROVA and Veselin JELEV

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