During the first half of 2018, Bulgaria holds the rotating presidency of the European Union. Admittedly, the vast majority of Bulgarians are pro-European and the government headed by the center-right Prime Minister Bojko Borissov manages to keep his accounts in order and avoid, on the contrary of Hungary and Poland to trample the rule of law or provoke on the subject of migrants. However, Bulgaria remains a country where corruption is very high and the freedom and plurality of the press is far from guaranteed. The satirical magazine Prass Pres, created in February 2017 by caricaturists Chavdar Georgiev, Tchavdar Nikolov, Ivaïlo Ninov and Hristo Komarnitski, is paying the price. Indirect censorship is operated thanks to the total control of newsstand distribution by the oligarch close to power, Delian Peevski (who also owns three quarters of the Bulgarian newspapers), who prevents the distribution of Prass Pres. This satirical journal does not hesitate to address all subjects that displease the power with biting and hard drawings. Prass Pres manages to survive, for the moment, thanks to the diffusion on Internet.
https://prass.press
https://www.facebook.com/prass.press.bg
The dire situation of the press in Bulgaria is described in a report published by the Center for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom (CMPF http://cmpf.eui.eu), a Center co-financed by the European Union and whose reports are published by the EU Publications Office:
http://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/46789/Bulgaria_EN.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
The last report concludes: « The results of the 2016 media Pluralism Monitor for Bulgaria indicate significant risks to media pluralism in the country. The main problems are in the areas of media concentration, editorial independence, state regulation of resources and social inclusiveness”.
While in 2006 Bulgaria ranked 35th on the Free Press Frontiers (RSF) press freedom index, it rose to 109th place (out of 180) in 2017. (https://rsf.org/en/ranking)
Prass Pres journalists have lodged a complaint with the Commission for the Defense of Competition, against the refusal of distribution they suffer. They are supported by a wave of solidarity of the Bulgarian press, including by titles considered close to power, a rare phenomenon.
It will be interesting to see if and how the EU will react to this situation, which it knows very well from the CMPF investigations it co-finances and publishes, or if the values defended by the Treaty in the area of the rule of law and freedom of are purely indicative.
