The Road To the European Parliament

A few days ago the representatives of one of the governing Bulgarian parties NDSV announced the choice for MEP-candidates. They were the first to do that in Bulgaria and although many people expected some surprises, there were non. Except one – now the king’s party is obviously using it’s best men to win some percentage for the Euro-elections.

NDSV seems to be scared of the 8% barrier to go into the National Parliament so they have to get as more MEPs as possible. Under the motto ‘We’re the Bulgaria’s European Party’ they would try to win some MEP mandates in order not to drown into the deep waters of political insignificancy. So how’s the ‘Bulgaria’s European Party’? Well, the answer is ‘By being the real European Party of Bulgaria’. The list of MEP-candidates consist of one Commissioner (ex-Minister of European matters), one ex-Foreign Minister, one present MEP, a notorious female pop-singer and 2 of the best known faces of the party. Six highly recognizable candidates that could really help NDSV to make satisfactory results on the elections. They could even hope to win 2 or 3 MEP positions (NDSV’s only MEP right now is Biliana Raeva, candidate for second mandate).

Really strong indeed. But is it a winning one? I’m afraid it’s not. No doubt that NDSV is the right party if you’d seek real European way of making politics here but the main problem is the lack of information in Bulgaria about how exactly the European parliament ‘works’. Some of the candidates have been acting as real European politicians during the NDSV mandate (2001-2005) but the leader king Simeon (it’s really funny, you wouldn’t like to know – in 2001 he even found out he had last name, in order to be registered as MP-candidate.) missed the chance to tell the Nation ‘European policy is really important’ and now in Bulgaria nobody cares about the EP elections. Well guess who’s problem is that.

I shall say: Thanks for the offer. I’d have to think it over. See you on June 5th, the date of the EP elections in Bulgaria.

* Picture: NDSV’s official website.

I was really surprised yesterday to read in one of the major Bulgarian business newspapers that only 4% of the Bulgarian citizens use internet to buy goods. Even if I haven’t made it yet, the low ratio of e-commerce in my country was such a shock. Then I took a look at the other stats and saw a huge gap between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ members of the Union. In fact the Scandinavians trade over the net about 30 times more than users in Romania, for example.

Here are some raw statistics from the official ‘Report on cross-border e-commerce in the EU’:

“In the UK in 2008, 57% of individuals had ordered goods or services over the internet for private use in the last year. In Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands the corresponding figure was also over 50%. In the two newest Member States, Bulgaria and Romania, however, the figure was respectively 3% and 4%. Estonia, Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Portugal saw around 10% of individuals purchasing online for private use in 2008.
According to the Fédération du e-commerce et de la vente à distance (FEVAD), 66% of internet users in France have made a purchase online. In Germany in 2007, 58.3% of individuals who had used the internet in the previous three months shopped online occasionally or frequently. In the Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland), 91% of internet users had traded over the internet in the previous six months.”

I was wondering what were the reasons for the huge differences. Lack of trust? The financial crisis? Bad experience? Probably all f the above. So “Brussels, we have a problem!” I don’t know about the differences between Estonian and German bloggers for example, but obviously there is a gap between the Estonian and German e-consumers.

My personal reasons not to trade over internet are simple. I’m not sure if someone wouldn’t use my personal data to empty my bank account. Or whether the purchased product will be good enough as described. And according to researches, it is the same with many of the users around the EU.

But how could this be changed. There are now some new steps in order to smooth over the problem. According to an official statement of the leading world international law organization DLA Piper, the Belgian office of the company has been selected by the European Commission to undertake a study reviewing the European legal framework for online services, to assess its gaps, future readiness and implementation hurdles. It also appears that new revised E-commerce Directive is expected to be launched in October 2009.

Not quite sure if that Directive would enforce I-net users to buy more goods online. I’m still not paying if travel cost remain half of the price of my purchase. Well, I could keep using torrent trackers to save money from audio-visual products to buy some books via Amazon but you must agree that E-commerce should lighten things, not make it harder.

How were your winter holidays? Mine were pretty cold. No, don’t understand me wrong – it wasn’t because of the lack of love, it was all about gas. Because somehow someone sometime in the beginning of january said: ‘Okay, cut their supplies then!’. Oh, it wasn’t ‘someone’ – it was the Russian Prime-minister Vladimir Putin.

And then the big winter started. Hundreds of thousands of people freezing at their homes – in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, etc. The reason – stopped gas supplies from Russia through Ukraine to their countries. The real reason – the lack of good policy of the EU countries on energy matters.

Well, the EU energy policy could be good enough on paper but it’s not quite working yet. And the problem is not that the strategy itself was proposed in the early 2007. The problem is that there is no common voice on the alternative gas supplies yet. The Nabucco project is going too slow and there are still many things to be decided. So this sentences countries like Bulgaria and Romania to become prisoners of Russian supplies.

‘Europe currently gets a quarter of its gas from Russia, with 80 percent of it coming through Ukraine. Some countries, like Bulgaria, are almost entirely dependent on the Russian energy behemoth Gazprom for their gas. Thus, tens of thousands of Bulgarians were left shivering in the winter cold after the supply going through the Ukraine was cut early in January.’ That statement in the business portal Eurasia.net would have just terrified me if I weren’t Bulgarian and I hadn’t suffered it myself.

In the last few days the problem arose once again – the Ukraine’s national energy company Naftogaz announced last Thursday it might face problems paying for natural gas supplied by Russia’s Gazprom as debts of Ukrainian utility companies grow. (information from the Russian news agency RIA Novosti). This means another gas crisis is comming. Sounds bad. And it will get worse and worse – and probably colder and colder.

So this is what we need: strong voice of the MPs that will find more ways to get out of the Russian dependance And this time they’d be ready to act much faster. Because the elections are comming and we wouldn’t like to wait if they can’t provide us the safety we need.

P.S. During the cold nights of January a favourite song of mine was very actual – Robbie Williams’ ‘Let Love Be Your Energy’. Since I know Russia and Ukraine don’t love each other very much… Well, thank God I’m still in love.

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* The Graphics are translated from Bulgarian and taken from Capital Weekly who quoted Financial Times.