Bulgaria’s President Rumen Radev has said he is submitting a request to parliament to hold a referendum on whether the country adopts the euro as its currency.
“Bulgaria, as a full member of the European Union, faces a strategic decision – the introduction of the single European currency,” Radev said in a national address.
“The referendum will be a test of the National Assembly’s democracy and will show who is following the principles of democracy and who is denying Bulgarians the right to determine their future. The referendum will be salutary for Bulgarian democracy.”
The path to the eurozone has not been an easy one for Bulgaria.
In 2024, the European Central Bank said the country couldn’t join the currency union because inflation in the country was too high.
And in February this year, police in Sofia clashed with nationalist protesters who demanded the government scrap plans to join the eurozone.
Around 1,000 protesters gathered in front of the Sofia office of the European Commission, the European Union’s executive branch, and threw red paint and firecrackers at the building, eventually setting a door on fire.
Bulgaria, which joined the EU in 2007, has been plagued by political instability over the last several years.
The new government, formed last month, has made eurozone membership a key priority.
But not everyone is convinced that Bulgaria is ready to join the eurozone.
Some economists claim that the country lacks an acceptable degree of economic condition to join the eurozone and it’s not yet ready to adopt the single currency.
But the government, backed by other pro-European parties in parliament, stress the political importance of adoption as another step to deepen European integration amid growing geopolitical tensions.
Trying to distract the country from this objective, pro-Russia nationalists are reportedly gearing up for more heated battles and have allegedly been using disinformation as a tool to spread fear among people.