Great Britain’s decision to leave the EU radically changed the union’s plans for the future. One of these changes concerns the rotating presidency of the EU with Bulgaria now having to assume its presidency six months earlier than planned – on 1 January instead of 1 July 2018. This fact means the country is venturing into the unknown and will be put to the test in unforeseen ways.

The more experienced countries of the EU start preparing for their presidencies 12 or even 18 months earlier. Knowing that this is a responsibility Bulgaria will be taking on for the first time, this country started preparing three years ago, but even before the Brexit referendum it was said that it was running critically late. In May this year government sources explained the delay with the bickering over who should head the national headquarters coordinating the preparations and the presidency itself. Now that it is clear the presidency will begin six months earlier, MeglenaKuneva, Deputy Prime Minister for European Policies Coordination and Institutional Affairs tentatively comments that meeting preparation deadlines was “not impossible”.

The situation really is complicated. The organizational question arises whether by1 January, 2018 Sofia will havefound a location to take in all of the 20,000 people expected to take part in the meetings in Bulgaria’s capital city over the six months of the country’s presidency. Overhauls of the official residences in Boyana and Lozenets are planned, as well as of the buildings of the former party house and the National Palace of Culture, but the deadlines are now really tight and the cost will be so much higher that some have starting asking the question whether the Bulgarian presidency might not become a “Brussels presidency”. This idea would mean Bulgaria would have to dispatch more people to its permanent representation in Brussels and have most of the events connected with its presidency held there. One of these events, for example, is 24 May, the Day of Bulgarian Education and Culture and the Slavonic Alphabet whose importance Bulgaria would like to demonstrate to the whole of Europe. The choice of who will head the operational headquarters will hinge on whether Bulgaria’s presidency will be a “Bulgarian” or a “Brussels” kind of presidency. Yet at this point this question does not seem to be on the agenda, and the preferences definitely seem to be for a presidency with headquarters in Sofia.

But the biggest questions on which the success of the presidency will to a great extent depend are connected with the EU’s main agenda – economic growth, reducing unemployment, social inclusion, equality and security for the citizens of Europe, migration, terrorism etc. During its presidency, Bulgaria may well have to work on the tangled problems of Brexit and the fate of the EU’s future enlargement.

For now the cabinet is saying that if the entire potential is activated it will be able to cope with the challenges of the unprecedented change in the period of Bulgaria’s presidency. The cabinet is optimistic, as while negotiating the new EU programming period, it has actually already put together a team of experts at all ministries who are highly prepared to work on the EU’s agenda during the presidency. But the start of the presidency six months earlier also gives one advantage in terms of domestic policy. The fact it will cover the first six months of 2018 excludes the hypothesis of possible early parliamentary elections in 2017, because a newly formed cabinet would not be able to cope with such a responsibility while at the same time giving the Borissov cabinet a chance of a forceful finale to its term of office. This is a powerful incentive for the government to tackle any new challenges. Whether it will do so or not is yet to be seen by the steps it will take.

English version: Milena Daynova