[ARTICLE] Bulgaria's Future
Nov. 2nd, 2003 11:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldFrom Transitions Online, "Bulgaria’s Parallel Universe":
Once flourishing, many communist-era industrial towns are now on the brink of extinction.
by Polia Alexandrova
SOFIA, Bulgaria--Travelling southeast from the Bulgarian capital of Sofia toward the border with Macedonia on the once-famous road leading to "the garden of Bulgaria," is an eerie trip through history--a ghost route littered by towns and villages long forgotten by the people and the state.
Abandoned factories, empty streets, and stray dogs are all elements of what Bulgaria’s younger generation calls the country’s parallel universe--the remnants of the past that somehow coexist with the present.
"I remember those places being wealthy and prosperous," said Ivan Kamenov, a taxi driver who has been servicing the ghost route for years. "Today they all are dying. People are leaving, the market value of houses is dropping, and unemployment is soaring."
About 20 miles from Sofia, the ghost town of Pernik is only a shell of what it used to be. Only 13 years ago, it was a flourishing coal mining town with an expansive black metallurgy and steel industry. Today most of its mines and factories are closed, lending the town a futuristic, end-of-the-world look. The only suggestion of life is the laundry hanging out to dry on balconies.
Pernik was one of many industrial towns built by the communist-era government. Today most of its citizens are pensioners who pass the time at the local pub, drowning their financial sorrows in Bulgarian brandy.
There are a few, like former plumber Stoyan Gavrilov, who try to scrape by, selling various wares on the street corners.
"I have a daughter studying in Sofia. All that I earn here, by selling shoes, I give to her," said Gavrilov. "Both my wife and I are unemployed. But the kid has to have a future. A day in the capital costs at least 5 leva (about $2.50); add the rent and some entertainment and everything is about 200 leva a month--exactly how much I make selling shoes here from dawn till dusk."
As for the younger people still left in Pernik, most of them wake up early in the morning to get the first train to the capital.
Nikolay and Yavor, computer programmers for a Sofia-based company, say they cannot afford to pay rent in the capital, and haven’t been able to move away from Pernik. Both dream of a future abroad.
THE GHOST OF UNEMPLOYMENT PRESENT
Southeast of Pernik is Radomir, where the ghosts are more numerous. Some 35 percent of the 17,000-strong population is unemployed.
"We used to say in the past that the best thing about Sofia was that it was close to Radomir," said Radko Karastoyanov, unemployed. "Unfortunately, we can’t joke about that anymore."
Under communism, the government had boosted the town’s population by providing incentives to workers to move to Radomir to work in the heavy machine industry. Much of the townspeople left after communism collapsed in 1991 and mass layoffs began.
It is difficult to find any young people hanging around the town. Most have either moved to Sofia or emigrated to Western Europe or the United States. The few who have stayed behind spend their time milling about the cafes, planning their escape. After all, there’s not much else to keep them busy: the 800-seat movie theater is out of business, the youth center burnt to the ground, and the sports center closed down.
Much of the residential area has been abandoned and many apartment buildings are half destroyed, with no windows or doors, no electricity, no elevators, and no water. At night, the town is engulfed in total darkness.
Further southeast toward Kyustendil the picture is no better. Once called "the heavenly garden of Bulgaria"--famous for fruit orchards, a strong agriculture tradition, hot mineral springs and baths, a beautiful landscape, and a colourful history--today’s Kystendil is slowly dying. The population has declined from 80,000 to 38,000 over the last 10 years.
Situated in the heart of Bulgaria, Gabrovo is famous for having been one of the most progressive cities during the 19th century. Before the collapse of communism, the town had a population of 104,000. Today it has declined to 82,300 and "progressive" is certainly no longer one of the town’s characteristics.
Most of the factories are now closed, and unemployment has reached 60 percent.
A famous wedding-house in the town’s center was once busy all day long, nearly every day of the week. Today the residents say it’s a miracle if anyone gets married. The population is progressively aging, with most of the young people seeking new lives abroad, largely in Israel, Greece, or Spain.
About 30 miles away from Gabrovo is Sevlievo, Bulgaria’s fastest-growing industrial center and one of the few towns that has preserved its population of about 25,000. In the past 10 years, Sevlievo has become an important economic spot with a well-developed agricultural sector and transport infrastructure. The town has been a helping hand to its larger, desperate neighbour, Gabrovo.
Sevlievo’s leading enterprises are all owned by foreign investors, who employ some 11,000 people, largely from neighboring towns and villages.
Though Gabrovo was once a leading industrial town, it was also one of the most polluted. Now that its industry has come to a halt, its new claim to fame is that it is one of the cleanest towns in Bulgaria.
"We might be poorer than our friends in Sevlievo," local people joke, "but at least our air is cleaner!"
DYING PLACES
"I take care of rabbits in my garage," said Hristo Hristov, the Road Inspection Chief in the town of Targovishte. "During the weekends and on holidays I work in my garden, a few kilometers away from the town, where I grow apples, peaches, plums, and grapes."
Hristov sounds happy about his work, but he is one of the lucky 10 percent of the northeastern Bulgarian town’s inhabitants who has any form of employment. Some 40,000 people are unemployed. Most of those fortunate enough to have a job are employed at the Coca Cola factory, while some survive on agricultural work, like the Hristovs.
Hristov shares a three-room apartment with his wife and 14-year-old daughter. They thought about selling their apartment, but it’s only valued at $2,000. The same apartment in the cities of Sofia, Varna, and Plovdiv would go for $40,000 to $70,000--a situation that makes moving into the city an impossibility for most of the town’s residents.
The local movie theater, which used to attract hundreds of people, hasn’t worked for months, though occasionally it will suddenly open on the odd weekend to play an old movie for 50 stotinki (25 cents). The most popular shops are the second-hand stores that sell donated clothes at $2 per kilogram.
There is a slight reprieve from the doom and gloom in Targovishte in May when the Spring Fair comes to town for 10 days, bringing a temporary dose of life. Dressed in their Sunday best, the townspeople spend all day at the fair and restaurants work from the early morning hours and stay open late. There is even a helicopter ride above the city for a modest fee.
The town of Vidin, in northwestern Bulgaria, is famous for its expansive squares adorned with communist-era monuments. But when the sun sets in this town, the darkness in the surrounding residential buildings illustrates the abandonment. And even many of the apartments with inhabitants are sunken in darkness after sunset, as few can afford to pay their electricity bills.
Unemployment is extremely high, as is emigration, and the town has recently been placed on Bulgaria’s “dying places” list, followed closely by Targovishte. Most people survive by illegal trade in small commodities, mostly between Bulgaria, Serbia, and Austria. But this risky business earns the traders $15 per day at best.
Like the other ghost towns, most of Vidin’s factories have been closed down, and enjoying a cup of coffee at a local café is the only form of entertainment left to the townspeople. Restaurants, clubs, and Internet cafes are closing their doors one after the other. The once crowded and lively streets are vacant and lonely, and time seems to have nearly stopped altogether.
ENTER THE STATE
The government, for its part, has made little attempt to save these once-prosperous towns from extinction. As such, the ghost towns depend on the good will of a handful of wealthy citizens, municipal authorities (who can do little to help), hopes of foreign investment, and, most of all, money from family members who have emigrated.
There have, however, been a few efforts to bring the towns back to life, involving both the government and nongovernmental organizations.
The Beautiful Bulgaria Project, initiated by the Bulgarian Labor and Social Ministry and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), provides vocational training in construction and tourism to prepare younger generations for employment. The project began in 1998, on the heels of the successful Beautiful Sofia Project in 1997.
So far, two governments have taken part in this program--the former ruling government led by the United Democratic Forces (SDS) and the present ruling government of the National Movement Simeon II (NDSV), which came to power in June 2001.
The first two phases of the project were successfully completed under the SDS government in 1998 and 2000, and primarily funded by the European Union, with contributions from the Swiss, Spanish, Greek, British, Canadian, and Dutch governments. The third and current phase of the project is funded by the NDSV government, the participating municipalities, and the UNDP.
Beautiful Bulgaria aims to alleviate unemployment, while improving living standards in the target towns, working to attract tourism, and strengthening small- and medium-size businesses.
Since its inception in Sofia, the project has gradually grown to encompass 100 municipalities across the country. So far, 38,095 unemployed persons have benefited from the project, 8,381 have been placed in permanent jobs, and 11,235 have received vocational training. Just over 11,900 minorities have also been included in the project.
But while the project has shown successful results in Kyustendil, Gabrovo, and Targovishte, in Pernik, Radomir, Devnya, and Vidin, it hasn’t yet gotten off the ground completely, and residents remain nostalgic for the past in the face of a hopeless future.
"At least we didn’t know what fear and insecurity meant then," said Bay Petko, a milkman from Radomir. "The future looks as dark to me as the broken street lamps in our town when the night falls down."
Bulgaria's economic and social prospect have been tracked extensively. Sam Vaknin, for instance, observes that
Socially, too, Bulgaria. has problems. The whole question of transition has raised new problems, including crime, a distant political establishment, and collapsing living standards. One prominent indicator of social collapse is the decline of the Bulgarian population from nine million to eight million in the decade after Communism--a product of falling birth rates, rising death rates, and substantial emigration.
The Economist (US), Dec 9, 2000 p2
A Bulgarian way into the EU; The EU 's Bulgarian immigrants. (Europe)(Brief Article)
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2000 Economist Newspaper Ltd.
WHILE the European Union's leaders meet this weekend in Nice to plan a way to bring Central Europeans into their embrace, a lot of ordinary people who live just across from the eastern edge of the club are in too much of a hurry to wait. Take the tobacco-growing village of Godeshevo, with its 1,350 people, in the sandy-coloured foothills of the Western Rhodope mountains in southern Bulgaria. It is a stone's throw from Greece's, and therefore the EU 's, border. At dusk, villagers drive their donkeys down from the fields in no-man's-land and mill around outside the white mosque. The men retire to the village bar, called Chicago because its owner famously won a "green card" in the American immigration lottery and moved there.
Outside the Chicago, under cover of night, hundreds of Bulgarians each month pass quickly over Godeshevo's fields, or wade across the Mesta river, sacks slung over their shoulders and avoiding border patrols on both sides, in search of undocumented jobs in Greece. In communist times Bulgaria put up an electric fence to keep its people in; now Greeks install state-of-the-art surveillance equipment to keep Bulgarian workers out.
That is changing. This month, the EU took Bulgaria off its list of countries whose citizens need visas to enter, even for tourism or short stays. Now Bulgarians can come in freely again-but not to get jobs. In return, Bulgaria agreed to restrict the entry of people from farther east, such as Moldovans and Ukrainians.
Still, visa-free travel for Bulgarians in the EU will not help Rasim, a 28-year-old labourer from Godeshevo, who wants to work in the Union. He is safely back in the Chicago after a few months' labouring in Greece. He walked for three days with no documents or connections before finding work near Salonika, picking tomatoes alongside Albanians, Arabs and Africans for $25 a day, the equivalent of half a month's wages in Godeshevo. This trip went well, he says. The time before, he was caught by the Greeks and detained for several weeks.
That will count against him if he gets a passport. About 85% of Bulgarians crossing the Greek border to seek work get caught sooner or later, reckons Arben Mimenov, the local vet who is also mayor of a neighbouring village. Those caught are deported by Greece and prosecuted at home by Bulgarian authorities keen to show good faith to the EU. "It's always the same story," says Atanaska Kitipova, a judge in Gotse Delchev, the regional capital, where the cases are heard: "No jobs, no money." As soon as the men (they are almost all men) leave her court, says Mrs Kitipova, "99% of them head straight back across the border."
Like Mexicans in California, Bulgarians find seasonal employment in Greece harvesting crops for the Greek minimum wage or less. Few in Godeshevo have good things to say about their Greek employers. Hypocritical, racist and exploitative are words that pop up most often from the villagers. Double standards are another frequent complaint. When relations with Albania, Greece's largest source of undocumented workers, are good, say the villagers, the Greeks tighten up on Godeshevo's stretch of the border; when relations with Albania are bad, Greek patrols turn a blind eye to Bulgarians crossing in search of work. "They almost wave us through when they need us to pick their crops on the cheap."
Greeks are investing quite a bit in villages on the Bulgarian side, putting up sweat-shops making clothes and shoes; labour is many times cheaper than in Greece. Bulgarian women work without contracts for $50 a month. The sweat-shop in Godeshevo theoretically pays a little more, but the women say they have not been paid for five months. With three-quarters of the villagers jobless, there is little choice.
As Muslims, the Godeshevo villagers face discrimination as well as poverty. They say that Greek employers treat Bulgarians with Muslim names even worse than those with Slav names. "Name-changing is a survival mechanism," says Mark Bossanyi, a Briton whose Inter-Ethnic Initiative, an independent group in Sofia, Bulgaria's capital, tries to promote racial tolerance in the region.
And nature treats Godeshevo roughly too. Water is scarce. In summer, villagers get only a two-hour supply every two days. A severe drought this year ruined two-thirds of the tobacco crop, the village's flimsy economic mainstay. Little wonder that a quarter of the men in the area have left for the EU, some of them legally to Spain, most of them illegally to Greece. It is a phenomenon that makes many voters in the EU nervous about letting poor countries to the east join their club.
The technological capacity of the Bulgarian economy--one of the least developed in Europe--to cope with European Union enlargement can also be doubted. The central European front runners have a plausible chance of reaching the levels of output and income found at the lower tier of the current crop of European Union members--Spain, Greece, Portugal--in a decade or so. For Bulgaria, the likelihood of this convergence is much smaller, while the effects of the Yugoslav civil war on Bulgaria--economic, military, geopolitical--can't be underestimated.
Once flourishing, many communist-era industrial towns are now on the brink of extinction.
by Polia Alexandrova
SOFIA, Bulgaria--Travelling southeast from the Bulgarian capital of Sofia toward the border with Macedonia on the once-famous road leading to "the garden of Bulgaria," is an eerie trip through history--a ghost route littered by towns and villages long forgotten by the people and the state.
Abandoned factories, empty streets, and stray dogs are all elements of what Bulgaria’s younger generation calls the country’s parallel universe--the remnants of the past that somehow coexist with the present.
"I remember those places being wealthy and prosperous," said Ivan Kamenov, a taxi driver who has been servicing the ghost route for years. "Today they all are dying. People are leaving, the market value of houses is dropping, and unemployment is soaring."
About 20 miles from Sofia, the ghost town of Pernik is only a shell of what it used to be. Only 13 years ago, it was a flourishing coal mining town with an expansive black metallurgy and steel industry. Today most of its mines and factories are closed, lending the town a futuristic, end-of-the-world look. The only suggestion of life is the laundry hanging out to dry on balconies.
Pernik was one of many industrial towns built by the communist-era government. Today most of its citizens are pensioners who pass the time at the local pub, drowning their financial sorrows in Bulgarian brandy.
There are a few, like former plumber Stoyan Gavrilov, who try to scrape by, selling various wares on the street corners.
"I have a daughter studying in Sofia. All that I earn here, by selling shoes, I give to her," said Gavrilov. "Both my wife and I are unemployed. But the kid has to have a future. A day in the capital costs at least 5 leva (about $2.50); add the rent and some entertainment and everything is about 200 leva a month--exactly how much I make selling shoes here from dawn till dusk."
As for the younger people still left in Pernik, most of them wake up early in the morning to get the first train to the capital.
Nikolay and Yavor, computer programmers for a Sofia-based company, say they cannot afford to pay rent in the capital, and haven’t been able to move away from Pernik. Both dream of a future abroad.
THE GHOST OF UNEMPLOYMENT PRESENT
Southeast of Pernik is Radomir, where the ghosts are more numerous. Some 35 percent of the 17,000-strong population is unemployed.
"We used to say in the past that the best thing about Sofia was that it was close to Radomir," said Radko Karastoyanov, unemployed. "Unfortunately, we can’t joke about that anymore."
Under communism, the government had boosted the town’s population by providing incentives to workers to move to Radomir to work in the heavy machine industry. Much of the townspeople left after communism collapsed in 1991 and mass layoffs began.
It is difficult to find any young people hanging around the town. Most have either moved to Sofia or emigrated to Western Europe or the United States. The few who have stayed behind spend their time milling about the cafes, planning their escape. After all, there’s not much else to keep them busy: the 800-seat movie theater is out of business, the youth center burnt to the ground, and the sports center closed down.
Much of the residential area has been abandoned and many apartment buildings are half destroyed, with no windows or doors, no electricity, no elevators, and no water. At night, the town is engulfed in total darkness.
Further southeast toward Kyustendil the picture is no better. Once called "the heavenly garden of Bulgaria"--famous for fruit orchards, a strong agriculture tradition, hot mineral springs and baths, a beautiful landscape, and a colourful history--today’s Kystendil is slowly dying. The population has declined from 80,000 to 38,000 over the last 10 years.
Situated in the heart of Bulgaria, Gabrovo is famous for having been one of the most progressive cities during the 19th century. Before the collapse of communism, the town had a population of 104,000. Today it has declined to 82,300 and "progressive" is certainly no longer one of the town’s characteristics.
Most of the factories are now closed, and unemployment has reached 60 percent.
A famous wedding-house in the town’s center was once busy all day long, nearly every day of the week. Today the residents say it’s a miracle if anyone gets married. The population is progressively aging, with most of the young people seeking new lives abroad, largely in Israel, Greece, or Spain.
About 30 miles away from Gabrovo is Sevlievo, Bulgaria’s fastest-growing industrial center and one of the few towns that has preserved its population of about 25,000. In the past 10 years, Sevlievo has become an important economic spot with a well-developed agricultural sector and transport infrastructure. The town has been a helping hand to its larger, desperate neighbour, Gabrovo.
Sevlievo’s leading enterprises are all owned by foreign investors, who employ some 11,000 people, largely from neighboring towns and villages.
Though Gabrovo was once a leading industrial town, it was also one of the most polluted. Now that its industry has come to a halt, its new claim to fame is that it is one of the cleanest towns in Bulgaria.
"We might be poorer than our friends in Sevlievo," local people joke, "but at least our air is cleaner!"
DYING PLACES
"I take care of rabbits in my garage," said Hristo Hristov, the Road Inspection Chief in the town of Targovishte. "During the weekends and on holidays I work in my garden, a few kilometers away from the town, where I grow apples, peaches, plums, and grapes."
Hristov sounds happy about his work, but he is one of the lucky 10 percent of the northeastern Bulgarian town’s inhabitants who has any form of employment. Some 40,000 people are unemployed. Most of those fortunate enough to have a job are employed at the Coca Cola factory, while some survive on agricultural work, like the Hristovs.
Hristov shares a three-room apartment with his wife and 14-year-old daughter. They thought about selling their apartment, but it’s only valued at $2,000. The same apartment in the cities of Sofia, Varna, and Plovdiv would go for $40,000 to $70,000--a situation that makes moving into the city an impossibility for most of the town’s residents.
The local movie theater, which used to attract hundreds of people, hasn’t worked for months, though occasionally it will suddenly open on the odd weekend to play an old movie for 50 stotinki (25 cents). The most popular shops are the second-hand stores that sell donated clothes at $2 per kilogram.
There is a slight reprieve from the doom and gloom in Targovishte in May when the Spring Fair comes to town for 10 days, bringing a temporary dose of life. Dressed in their Sunday best, the townspeople spend all day at the fair and restaurants work from the early morning hours and stay open late. There is even a helicopter ride above the city for a modest fee.
The town of Vidin, in northwestern Bulgaria, is famous for its expansive squares adorned with communist-era monuments. But when the sun sets in this town, the darkness in the surrounding residential buildings illustrates the abandonment. And even many of the apartments with inhabitants are sunken in darkness after sunset, as few can afford to pay their electricity bills.
Unemployment is extremely high, as is emigration, and the town has recently been placed on Bulgaria’s “dying places” list, followed closely by Targovishte. Most people survive by illegal trade in small commodities, mostly between Bulgaria, Serbia, and Austria. But this risky business earns the traders $15 per day at best.
Like the other ghost towns, most of Vidin’s factories have been closed down, and enjoying a cup of coffee at a local café is the only form of entertainment left to the townspeople. Restaurants, clubs, and Internet cafes are closing their doors one after the other. The once crowded and lively streets are vacant and lonely, and time seems to have nearly stopped altogether.
ENTER THE STATE
The government, for its part, has made little attempt to save these once-prosperous towns from extinction. As such, the ghost towns depend on the good will of a handful of wealthy citizens, municipal authorities (who can do little to help), hopes of foreign investment, and, most of all, money from family members who have emigrated.
There have, however, been a few efforts to bring the towns back to life, involving both the government and nongovernmental organizations.
The Beautiful Bulgaria Project, initiated by the Bulgarian Labor and Social Ministry and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), provides vocational training in construction and tourism to prepare younger generations for employment. The project began in 1998, on the heels of the successful Beautiful Sofia Project in 1997.
So far, two governments have taken part in this program--the former ruling government led by the United Democratic Forces (SDS) and the present ruling government of the National Movement Simeon II (NDSV), which came to power in June 2001.
The first two phases of the project were successfully completed under the SDS government in 1998 and 2000, and primarily funded by the European Union, with contributions from the Swiss, Spanish, Greek, British, Canadian, and Dutch governments. The third and current phase of the project is funded by the NDSV government, the participating municipalities, and the UNDP.
Beautiful Bulgaria aims to alleviate unemployment, while improving living standards in the target towns, working to attract tourism, and strengthening small- and medium-size businesses.
Since its inception in Sofia, the project has gradually grown to encompass 100 municipalities across the country. So far, 38,095 unemployed persons have benefited from the project, 8,381 have been placed in permanent jobs, and 11,235 have received vocational training. Just over 11,900 minorities have also been included in the project.
But while the project has shown successful results in Kyustendil, Gabrovo, and Targovishte, in Pernik, Radomir, Devnya, and Vidin, it hasn’t yet gotten off the ground completely, and residents remain nostalgic for the past in the face of a hopeless future.
"At least we didn’t know what fear and insecurity meant then," said Bay Petko, a milkman from Radomir. "The future looks as dark to me as the broken street lamps in our town when the night falls down."
Bulgaria's economic and social prospect have been tracked extensively. Sam Vaknin, for instance, observes that
"Surprisingly, [...] macro-economic achievements had little effect on the business climate. Bulgarian businessmen have remained largely sceptical of the economic prospects of their country. Enterpreneurship is still obstructed by insufficient infrastructure, inefficient, arbitrage-orientated and lending-averse banks, and over-regulation (e.g., in the energy sector). Venal red tape deters investors. There is no central revenue authority, for instance, and no functioning treasury system. Labour taxes are stratospheric and drive people into the thriving informal economy (estimated to be about one third of the total). And, despite being a trading nation, Bulgarian customs duties and tariffs are both complex and high.
The lot of simple people has not discernibly improved either. Output is 30% below the communist-era peak. Unemployment is high by European standards (between 16 and 18%). The average monthly income in southern Bulgaria (an agricultural and textile area that borders Greece) is still $50 or less, one of the lowest in any economy in transition. Wages are one fourth the EU's."
Socially, too, Bulgaria. has problems. The whole question of transition has raised new problems, including crime, a distant political establishment, and collapsing living standards. One prominent indicator of social collapse is the decline of the Bulgarian population from nine million to eight million in the decade after Communism--a product of falling birth rates, rising death rates, and substantial emigration.
The Economist (US), Dec 9, 2000 p2
A Bulgarian way into the EU; The EU 's Bulgarian immigrants. (Europe)(Brief Article)
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2000 Economist Newspaper Ltd.
WHILE the European Union's leaders meet this weekend in Nice to plan a way to bring Central Europeans into their embrace, a lot of ordinary people who live just across from the eastern edge of the club are in too much of a hurry to wait. Take the tobacco-growing village of Godeshevo, with its 1,350 people, in the sandy-coloured foothills of the Western Rhodope mountains in southern Bulgaria. It is a stone's throw from Greece's, and therefore the EU 's, border. At dusk, villagers drive their donkeys down from the fields in no-man's-land and mill around outside the white mosque. The men retire to the village bar, called Chicago because its owner famously won a "green card" in the American immigration lottery and moved there.
Outside the Chicago, under cover of night, hundreds of Bulgarians each month pass quickly over Godeshevo's fields, or wade across the Mesta river, sacks slung over their shoulders and avoiding border patrols on both sides, in search of undocumented jobs in Greece. In communist times Bulgaria put up an electric fence to keep its people in; now Greeks install state-of-the-art surveillance equipment to keep Bulgarian workers out.
That is changing. This month, the EU took Bulgaria off its list of countries whose citizens need visas to enter, even for tourism or short stays. Now Bulgarians can come in freely again-but not to get jobs. In return, Bulgaria agreed to restrict the entry of people from farther east, such as Moldovans and Ukrainians.
Still, visa-free travel for Bulgarians in the EU will not help Rasim, a 28-year-old labourer from Godeshevo, who wants to work in the Union. He is safely back in the Chicago after a few months' labouring in Greece. He walked for three days with no documents or connections before finding work near Salonika, picking tomatoes alongside Albanians, Arabs and Africans for $25 a day, the equivalent of half a month's wages in Godeshevo. This trip went well, he says. The time before, he was caught by the Greeks and detained for several weeks.
That will count against him if he gets a passport. About 85% of Bulgarians crossing the Greek border to seek work get caught sooner or later, reckons Arben Mimenov, the local vet who is also mayor of a neighbouring village. Those caught are deported by Greece and prosecuted at home by Bulgarian authorities keen to show good faith to the EU. "It's always the same story," says Atanaska Kitipova, a judge in Gotse Delchev, the regional capital, where the cases are heard: "No jobs, no money." As soon as the men (they are almost all men) leave her court, says Mrs Kitipova, "99% of them head straight back across the border."
Like Mexicans in California, Bulgarians find seasonal employment in Greece harvesting crops for the Greek minimum wage or less. Few in Godeshevo have good things to say about their Greek employers. Hypocritical, racist and exploitative are words that pop up most often from the villagers. Double standards are another frequent complaint. When relations with Albania, Greece's largest source of undocumented workers, are good, say the villagers, the Greeks tighten up on Godeshevo's stretch of the border; when relations with Albania are bad, Greek patrols turn a blind eye to Bulgarians crossing in search of work. "They almost wave us through when they need us to pick their crops on the cheap."
Greeks are investing quite a bit in villages on the Bulgarian side, putting up sweat-shops making clothes and shoes; labour is many times cheaper than in Greece. Bulgarian women work without contracts for $50 a month. The sweat-shop in Godeshevo theoretically pays a little more, but the women say they have not been paid for five months. With three-quarters of the villagers jobless, there is little choice.
As Muslims, the Godeshevo villagers face discrimination as well as poverty. They say that Greek employers treat Bulgarians with Muslim names even worse than those with Slav names. "Name-changing is a survival mechanism," says Mark Bossanyi, a Briton whose Inter-Ethnic Initiative, an independent group in Sofia, Bulgaria's capital, tries to promote racial tolerance in the region.
And nature treats Godeshevo roughly too. Water is scarce. In summer, villagers get only a two-hour supply every two days. A severe drought this year ruined two-thirds of the tobacco crop, the village's flimsy economic mainstay. Little wonder that a quarter of the men in the area have left for the EU, some of them legally to Spain, most of them illegally to Greece. It is a phenomenon that makes many voters in the EU nervous about letting poor countries to the east join their club.
The technological capacity of the Bulgarian economy--one of the least developed in Europe--to cope with European Union enlargement can also be doubted. The central European front runners have a plausible chance of reaching the levels of output and income found at the lower tier of the current crop of European Union members--Spain, Greece, Portugal--in a decade or so. For Bulgaria, the likelihood of this convergence is much smaller, while the effects of the Yugoslav civil war on Bulgaria--economic, military, geopolitical--can't be underestimated.
