"Economic Policy Review" Bulletin ISSN 1313 - 0544

The Institute for Market Economics (founded 1993) is the oldest free-market think tank in Bulgaria. While we have heralded the positive effect of Bulgaria being a member of the EU for more than 10 years now, we have also been increasingly concerned about some initiatives that aim to shift the Union away from its founding principles. Such is the case with the proposal to “explore how EU decision-making on certain tax issues could be streamlined by removing the need for unanimous agreement by all countries”. Here we present our arguments why we strongly oppose this proposal. All quotations are taken from the Roadmap published by the European Commission.

Even if there were an informal criterion for real convergence of incomes to the EU average, then Bulgaria would have fulfilled it. This is clearly evident from the decision to admit the three Baltic States to ERM II at income levels that had been lower or similar to those of Bulgaria at the moment. The other possible explanation lies in the domain of political hypocrisy and the use of euphemisms behind which European politicians (like most politicians) usually hide. Which of the two explanations is relevant to the case will be seen pretty soon if the Bulgarian Finance Minister fulfills his promise and files an application for euro adoption by June this year.

The summer seminar "Europe & Liberty", organised by the Institute for Market Economics (IME) and Institute for Economic Studies (IES - Europe) has been hugely successful in last seven years (2011-2017). Due to some funding issues, we invite you to support our initiative in 2018. The IME will host both a crowdfunding campaign and a direct fundraising campaign focused on IME donors and alumni of the seminar. The goal of the campaign is to fund participant costs - the seminar is completely free for those who take part in it.

The grouping within the centres was done around the economic cores, which gather significant daily labour migration from surrounding municipalities, have significant concentration of employed people and generate relatively large production.