FOR those worried by the Kremlin’s growing influence in Europe, Bulgaria has long been a prime suspect. As much as 90% of its gas comes from Russia. It is an ardent backer of South Stream, a Balkan gas pipeline that Russia is promoting in defiance of European Union rules on public procurement and energy liberalisation. A Russian presence in the murky worlds of Bulgarian banking and political-party finance has also aroused concern.
This month the issue has come to a head. On June 3rd the EU flatly told Bulgaria to stop work on South Stream, a project also backed by the governments of Austria, Greece and Hungary. The Bulgarian government—a minority coalition of Socialists and a party of ethnic Turks—instantly refused. On the same day the EU temporarily cut tens of millions of euros in regional-development funds, the distribution of which has long been a bailiwick of the Turkish party, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS in Bulgarian). The EU has privately threatened to freeze more. This stoked a row inside the coalition between DPS and its Socialist (ex-communist) allies, South Stream’s strongest backers.
On June 8th John McCain, an American senator, on a visit to Sofia, bluntly warned the Socialist prime minister, Plamen Oresharski, over the danger of proceeding with South Stream. America is particularly unhappy about the project. One of the contractors, Stroytransgaz, is owned by Gennady Timchenko, a Russian magnate who is on the White House sanctions list because of his ties to Vladimir Putin.
Mr Oresharski promptly said that he was suspending work on the pipeline, pending consultations with the EU. His energy minister contradicted him, saying the decision to back South Stream was “irreversible”. An already weak government began to look doomed. On June 17th Rosen Plevneliev, the president, said that the country’s political parties had agreed to hold an election this autumn, two years ahead of schedule.
The president—a strong Atlanticist and pro-European who doesn’t belong to any political party—has come out well from this. But he lacks a political base. Some hope he will form a political party to campaign in the election. The other big winner is the beefy Boyko Borisov, an ex-bodyguard who heads GERB, the nominally centre-right opposition party. The most likely election outcome will be a government headed by him, with the perennial DPS as a junior partner.
But shuffling the cards will not resolve worries about corruption and the abuse of power that have fuelled the political crisis. Particular controversy surrounds a leading figure in DPS, Delyan Peevski, a media tycoon whom the government tried to put in charge of the state security agency. He came second in the party’s list for the European elections, but had to step down because of opposition from the Liberal group in the parliament, to which DPS belongs. He now claims that Tzvetan Vassilev, a banker with close ties to Moscow and the Socialist Party, tried to have him killed last week (Mr Vassilev denies this).
The fall of the government may be a sign that, when it comes to the crunch, local magnates’ power exceeds the Kremlin’s. But that is no cause for comfort.