Bulgarian President Plevneliev: 2015 Should Be Year of Reform

Bulgaria's President Rosen Plevneliev has vowed to put in effort to make sure 2015 will be a year of reform.

At a press conference wrapping up the third year of his term in office, Plevneliev praised the government's priorities in energy, infrastructure and long-term planning, but stressed more was to be done to overcome the ongoing political crisis and fight nationalism and populism.

He put an emphasis on defense expenditures, which in his words are currently underfinanced, and which should be boosted "to reverse this trend."

The President told last year counterparts at the NATO summit in Wales that the country would increase military spending in 2015 and the years after to reach the 2020 target of 2% of GDP set by the alliance. Bulgaria, however, failed to set aside additional funding.

He pointed to some of Bulgaria's successes over the past year, citing the appointment of Kristalina Georgieva as the EU Vice President for Budget and Human Resources and both the EU and national elections which in his words consolidated "integration and democratic values" and restated Bulgaria's place "in the modern world and the huge single European market."

However, he also warned a political crisis could still be felt in the country and is yet to be "overcome."

"We witnessed instability, unprincipled confrontation, lack of truct to [former Prime Minister] Plamen Oresharski's government at a historic high, a symbol of which were the barricades in front of Parliament and the longest-running protests in Bulgaria's recent history."

In Plevneliev's words, the flawed 2014 budget, the crisis at Corporate Commercial Bank (KTB) and in the energy sector, along with isolation on the foreign policy stage, had been challenges to...