Desecuritisation and citizen empowerment is the future of the Bulgarian-Romanian border

On 19 November 2024, the Institute for Central Europe organised the second Lublin Eastern European Forum 2024: Securitising the Eastern Border of the European Union: Politics vs. Reality at the Lublin Conference Centre. The founder of the Bridge of Friendship, Vladimir Mitev, took part in a panel discussion on borders in South Eastern Europe.

Vladimir Mitev explained why the Bulgarian-Romanian border was traditionally thick and how it began to disappear thanks to the war in Ukraine, which made Sofia and Bucharest realise that their relationship had unexpected potential. Vladimir also spoke about how the synchronisation of the countries in the region is something positive, but it should be a process involving all the people. That is why it is not enough for cooperation to be imposed by our Western partners. Our societies and citizens should have their own dynamics and agency in this process.

Besides Vladimir, the other two speakers were Labinot Hajdari, a Kosovo university and NGO activist for better cross-border understanding in the Western Balkans, and Spasimir Domaradzki, a Polish-Bulgarian international relations expert. They added their perspectives with theory and practice on borders in the Balkans/South East Europe.

At the end, Vladimir Mitev also answered a question from the audience from a Romanian expert on Bulgaria’s alleged links with Russia.

Konrad Pawlowski, Institute for Central European Studies: The last panel is about the Balkans, the Balkan borders and European borders. By the way, the Balkans are of course a part of Europe. Although, if you remember, one of the Austrian politicians, I think it was Chancellor Metternich, said something to the effect that “Europe ends at Wilhelmstrasse in Vienna”.

I do not agree with him. So when you talk about the Balkans, sometimes you talk about the other Europe, something different, but I would say it’s not so different. For me, at least, it’s not that different.

And when you talk about the Balkans, you’re also talking about the region that is divided by so many borders. I mean, when you talk about the geography of the region, there are a lot of mountains, there are rivers, and there are borders that separate states, but also internal borders. When you talk about borders, you’re also talking about internal borders.

And finally, the mental borders. The region is very divided between so many different historical narratives, between so many things. And we don’t have time to discuss it all.

It would be very interesting to go on. But let me concentrate on general issues. And we are going to talk about general issues today.

And let me introduce our distinguished panellist here. Dr Labinot Hajdari. He is a professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Public International Business College, Mitrovica, Kosovo.

He is also the founder and director of the Kosovo International Summer Academy. I think I would say that all his professional activities are focused on building bridges between societies. I will continue this discussion later on.

The second panellist is Mr Vladimir Mitev from Bulgaria. He is a Bulgarian journalist. He is an expert on Bulgarian-Romanian relations, also an expert on the Middle East and Iran.

And he is the founder of the blog The Bridge of Friendship. The second one is The Persian Bridge of Friendship. And he is also the co-host of a podcast on international relations. The name of the podcast is Cross-Border Talks. You are welcome, Vladimir.

Thank you very much.

It’s a pleasure to have you here. And our last panelist is Dr Spasimir Domaradzki. He is a lecturer at the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Warsaw, but also a senior analyst at our Institute of Central Europe.

I’m glad you’re here. Welcome to all of you. My name is Konrad Pawlowski.

I’m the head of the Balkans Department at the Institute of Central Europe and also a researcher at Maria Sklodowska University. I would like to begin with some general thoughts about the Balkans. But let me start with the questions about the physical borders, I mean the real administrative borders between the states in the region.

So first I would like to ask Vladimir Mitev about the border between Romania and Bulgaria. Because I have always said, in discussions with my students, that there is only one bridge between Bulgaria and Romania, as an example of some problematic relations between two states. But it’s not just problematic in terms of communication or transport.

It’s much broader, I would say. That’s why, Vladimir, would you like to explain the specificity of this border, please?

Thank you. In fact, Bulgaria and Romania have a thick border.

The Danube forms about 470 km of it. And then the rest of the border, up to the total length of 609 km, is a land border. But in any case, it’s a border that is relatively difficult to cross.

As you mentioned, there is not one bridge, there are actually two bridges. But the process of building the bridges is somehow difficult, both physically and I would say also in terms of interpersonal or societal relations. There are many ways in which you can go and find some difficulties in these relationships. And I want to emphasise these difficulties because it’s not normal that they exist. And I even have to say that the Poles with whom I have communicated are a rare case of a nation that realises that there is something unnatural or strange in this distance that they have observed between Bulgarians and Romanians.

I can give an example of Andrzej Staszuk, who spoke at the Polish Institute in Sofia about 10 years ago. And in his books, in his travel diaries, and also in his lectures, he noticed this distance and he asked what was the reason for it, and he didn’t have a good answer. And I can also give you examples of some foreign policy experts that I have spoken to from the Centre for Central Europe or the other big institute OSW. In any case, Bulgaria and Romania, for some reason, have had difficulties, for example, to settle their border on the Danube.

You know that there is always some movement of islands in one direction or another, new islands appear, and so on. So there are some islands of a few square kilometres that periodically move either to the Bulgarian or to the Romanian zone of the border. And I don’t know if you know this, but the last time Bulgaria and Romania agreed on their Danube border was in 1908, more than 115 years ago. The agreement was that every 10 years the governments of the two countries would get together and redraw the border, which meant that some islands would go to the Bulgarian side, some other islands to the Romanian side, and so on.They have met many times during this period. It’s difficult to say exactly what was missing, but basically they didn’t agree. And my thesis is that this difficulty to find common ground or to make concessions is perhaps related to certain aspects of the periphery, the fact that the countries are more on the periphery, which means that there is a certain hegemony or culture of hegemony, and if you give a few square metres of uninhabited land to your neighbour, who might be seen in hegemonic terms as a competitor or an enemy, that’s already a kind of betrayal of “national interest” and you can be attacked.

In any case, there has been no agreement for 115 years and there are problems that arise as a result. There are cases where Bulgarians go to an island that is considered Bulgarian and are arrested by the Romanian police. Or there are cases the other way round. Even in October this year there was a case where a Romanian family, basically a father and son, tried to collect some wood on an island that is considered Bulgarian, but it is so close to Romania that you can even go with a cart and there is no problem crossing the waters. And there was actually a victim in this situation, because some events unfolded that led to a situation where one of the men was shot by the Bulgarian police.

If we were thinking in terms of the Cold War, perhaps such things could be justified, just as we have been talking at this conference about the securitisation of borders between NATO and its adversaries. But in the case of the border between Bulgaria and Romania it is different, because we are in the EU, we are in NATO. There is no more Cold War between the countries. And I think that the reason why these experiences continue is because of the inertia in the relations.

You wanted me to talk only about the border, or could I talk a bit more about relations? OK, so I’m going to make some more observations about borders, if you don’t mind.

About the bridges, another example. In fact, bridges between Bulgaria and Romania are only built when there is international pressure. I mean, of course, the countries started negotiating on bridge building again from the moment the modern Bulgarian state was re-established in 1878. There were ambitions and then some discussions about bridging to Romania, and yet reaching an agreement is a very complex process with a lot of details and a lot of difficulties for negotiating teams and experts. As a result, the first bridge across the Danube between Bulgaria and Romania was built in 1954.

It started being built in 1952 and you may be aware of the fact that in 1952 Greece and Turkey joined NATO. So, in fact, it was a bridge meant to serve certain strategic purposes during the Cold War for the Eastern Bloc. And, of course, it was built with support from the Soviet Union and other countries in the Eastern Bloc. This was the first bridge at Ruse-Giurgiu. It was the international imperative which led to the construction of this bridge. It was not the dynamism and the desire of the two countries and their ability to cooperate.

And in the case of the second bridge, which is at Vidin-Calafat, the Austrian, and maybe you could say the European Union, role is important. Given that there was war in Yugoslavia in the 90s, and that led to the process of taking decisions, giving money, etc. But, see, the agreement for this bridge was signed in the year 2000 and it was completed in 2013.

So, you can, again, get an idea that even when there is international support and a number of obstacles are resolved, change happens slowly.

And if I have to end the talk on the borders, you may ask, OK, Danube is a river border, maybe it’s difficult to trespass. What about the land border? I’ll maybe speak later about the borders of experience or between people.

Not really so much borders in physical terms, but borders inside us. In the case of Dobrudja, perhaps you are aware that Dobrudja was, through the first half of the 20th century, a contested region between Romania and Bulgaria. The Dobrudjan question ended with the Craiova Treaty of September 1940, which led to the partition of Dobrudja.

So, southern Dobrudja is now in Bulgaria, northern Dobrudja is in Romania. And the treaty was related to population exchange, which meant that Bulgarians from northern Dobrudja were moved to southern Dobrudja. And people to which in Bulgaria we refer as colonialists, people who Romania settled in the land when it acquired it after 1913, were sent to northern Dobrudja.

The thing is that, at least from my own experience, the attitude of people on both sides, in southern and northern Dobrudja, towards the other nation has developed more slowly than in other parts of the country. Of course, if someone is familiar with these relations, he can also share his experiences. We have other people with experience from the region.

But my own experience is that in Tutrakan, for example, which is one of the towns in southern Dobrudja, there is a lot of emphasis on Bulgarian resistance to Romanian rule in the country. And in Balchik, if you are identified as a Romanian speaker, people can be suspicious. So there is a feeling that in a way the struggle for Dobrudja is perhaps continuing a little or more.

And on the other hand, in northern Dobrudja there are associations of people whose grandfathers and grandmothers somehow lived in the south. And as far as I know, they’re still a bit sceptical about the Bulgarians. So even if this issue is not officially raised and is resolved by the states, if we focus on the level of the people, at some level we may get different attitudes.

Of course we can have Romanian speakers in the Bulgarian part of Dobrudja, we can have people who have a good attitude towards Bulgarians in the Romanian part. But I think it’s important that parts of the population still live this struggle, even though so many years have passed. So this is my small entry into the question of borders.

Later I can talk about how the border has evolved, because there is a certain evolution, even from the socialist period, after the EU accession and after the war in Ukraine. It’s a strange situation. All the speakers had some sense of concern about the war in Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine is perhaps the best thing that has happened to Bulgarian-Romanian relations. I know it may sound cynical, but it is true that the war in Ukraine became a kind of catalyst for Bulgarian-Romanian relations, helping the countries to overcome their traditional inertia, at least in political relations. So, if there is an opportunity, I could talk more about how the border has evolved and also about how the inertia still exists in a way. On one level it is being overcome, but maybe I can talk about why on one level it is being overcome and why on another level it isn’t.

I’m afraid we don’t have that much time, to be honest, and we have to speed up a bit. Thank you very much.

So we have heard that we still have some kind of hard borders. I mean, we had the hard borders in the region and not only between the Western Balkan countries, but it also affects, unfortunately, Romania and Bulgaria to some extent. And so I would like to put the next question to Dr Labinot Hajdari because you come from Kosovo and there is a lot of discussion about borders when we think about Kosovo.

So the question is, how do the border crossings of Kosovo work on an international level? Would you like to explain that to us, because I think for many people it’s still quite a new topic, I would say. So, Dr Labinot, it’s your turn, please.

Labinot Hajdari: Thank you very much for having me here as a doctoral student from Poland. It’s always a great pleasure to be back in my second home, shall we say.

Well, although the Western Balkans is the last panel, it’s not less important in terms of geopolitical developments, especially after the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The border security challenges between the EU and the Western Balkans are very complex, driven by different geopolitical, socio-economic and so on, but also security developments. The history of the region from the conflicts of 1990-1999 and the issues of migration, organised crime and terrorists remain one of the main challenges for the Western Balkans.

Kosovo joined the Western world in imposing sanctions on Russia. Although Ukraine is still one of the countries that has not yet recognised Kosovo, as a victim of the genocide that took place in the former Yugoslavia, Kosovo has shown empathy towards Ukraine. This is very important.

The security challenges remain one of the main concerns, particularly for Kosovo, considering that all the first neighbours to the north of Kosovo are Russia’s proxy, in this regard, unfortunately, Serbia, which remains the closest ally as the Western Balkans, but also in Europe, with Russia. Last year, even the consciousness of the Kosovo institutions tried to make the international community aware, before, especially since the invasion of Ukraine, of the consequences about the potential conflict in the Western Balkans, with the aim to open the new conflicts in the Western Balkans, with the aim to shift the attention of the international community from the war in Ukraine to another conflict in the Western Balkans. And that almost happened.

Last year, we had a scenario to repeat the Crimea in northern Kosovo, where hundreds of uninformed, heavily militarised individuals entered Kosovo, illegally of course, through the Serbian borders, and attacked Kosovo institutions. And the aim was to repeat another Crimea, which fortunately didn’t happen. It was prevented, firstly by the NATO presence in Kosovo, and secondly by the Kosovo authorities.

Migration also remains a challenge. Although it has been mentioned that the Western Balkans is just a transit route for migrants, this lack of cooperation, especially between Kosovo and Serbia, remains one of the challenges in order to manage all of what has been mentioned, this cross-border management as well. 

In terms of Russia, as I said, it’s still a concern for the Kosovo institutions, it’s still a major concern for the Kosovars. The Russian narrative is still there. Before the invasion of Ukraine, almost in every press release of the Kremlin, Lavrov, Putin, the Kosovo case was their narrative, their discourse. So they wanted to portray the international community as a failure in terms of bringing democracy to the Western Balkans, to the Kosovars, the Kosovo Albanians, who happened to be victims of genocide.

I can tell you personally how excited I am about this success story of Kosovo and the involvement of the international community. And I believe that this is what the international community should continue to do with Ukraine. Of course, another element is a weaker rule of law, also in general in the Western Balkans.

Corruption and inefficiency also within the border control agencies. This hampers the effectiveness of security measures in the Western Balkans. Dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina is crucial.

And I think that this dialogue, which actually started 12 years ago as a technical dialogue, but then turned into a political dialogue, it is important, especially for the European Union, to become more proactive in order to find a solution and to bring about a lasting peace in the Western Balkans. Of course, we may mention this later, but another important element is the acceleration of a radical integration of the Western Balkans as a whole. Three countries that remain outside NATO are Kosovo, Serbia and Bosnia, mainly because of the Republic of Serbia.

While Kosovo, of course, is ready to join NATO, the other countries are still playing both cards when it comes to European and Western Balkan friendship and also friendship with Russia. 

Yes, just to mention that one of the main challenges is border control, also in terms of migration and terrorists, considering that especially five or six years ago we had the foreign fighters who returned to the Western Balkans. So it was impossible, let’s say, to effectively control the borders in the Western Balkans, considering the landscape, the difficulties, the lack of infrastructure that the Western Balkan countries had in their borders to stay, let’s say, or to keep the borders effectively controlled.

Some of the challenges that need to be addressed in this regard with the proactive role of the European Union, but also the United States, is to strengthen border management and law enforcement capacity through the EU-funded programmes, of course, to improve cross-border cooperation in the fight against organised crime and human trafficking, to promote, and this is the most important one, regional stability through political dialogue, particularly between Kosovo and Serbia. Only yesterday we had an agreement with North Macedonia on cross-border management. This means that the two countries will cooperate on two of the main borders between Kosovo and North Macedonia.

And supporting Euro-Atlantic integration or accelerating Euro-Atlantic integration remains one of the most important, let’s say, needs to ensure peace and stability in the Western Balkans. Thank you very much. 

Thank you very much. You mentioned a lot of issues directly related to the Russian aggression over Ukraine, so thank you for that as well. And the next question is about his personal experience. I would like to ask Dr Spasimir Domaradzki about his experience, because Spasimir has been crossing all these borders from the Balkans to Central Europe all his life.

And so can you tell us how the system, like the border control system, whatever, your personal experience related to the borders, how it has changed over the years? 

Spasimir Domaradzki: Thank you very much. Thank you, Konrad. No, I’m not going to say that. That is something I sometimes prefer not to remember. But I will start from a different place and I hope I will finish where you expected me to finish. First of all, just to pick up on Vladimir’s point, we are talking about two countries, members of the European Union and NATO, connected by only two bridges over the river.

And it’s literally a very funny exercise to try to follow the political debates in both countries about the prospect of another bridge, which shows very clearly how both internal politics and geopolitical considerations, purely business interests, determine the fact that the next bridges cannot appear. So we have to be aware that in geopolitical terms the road through Bulgaria and Romania is the shortest land route from the Middle East to Europe. And it is used in the context of EU-Turkey relations for very intensive exchanges within the customs union.

And in that respect, if you look at the infrastructural challenges, it is fascinating how even in the context of support from external factors, first the Soviet Union and now the European Union, these two countries have only been able to build two bridges. So this is a very interesting example of how local animosities and interests continue to shape the relationship. I think it is worth coming back to this argument about the periphery later.

But for now, what I wanted to say, and I think we all deserve this brief introduction to the context of the Balkans, is that we have a tendency to divide them into East and West, which is to a large extent a very artificial division, usually following significant historical events. But we have to be aware that the Balkans is an area, firstly, of overlapping imperial experiences and, secondly, very much influenced by the Cold War. I think that the experience of the Cold War is an absolute phenomenon.

Even if Europe was divided into East and West, then the Balkans was divided into three parts. And that made it much more interesting, dense and full of various types of paradoxes. We need to remember that whereas the East and the West were indeed meeting in the Balkans on the border between Bulgaria and Greece and Turkey, then Yugoslavia was remaining this kind of an awkward player in between, that was neither a West nor an East, with an army prepared to resist oppression both from the West and from the East, at the same time representing Eastern ideology financed with Western money.

So it was really a perfect solution, if you think about economic development, and a source of enormous nostalgia from today’s perspective. On the other hand, these borders have very much shaped the nature and functioning of these countries. If you look at Bulgaria’s southern borders with Greece and Turkey, you have to be aware that there are still minefields between Bulgaria and Greece and between Bulgaria and Turkey that literally cannot be crossed.

On the other hand, as a child living in Bulgaria, I remember that there were three military units very close to the Bulgarian-Turkish border (conscription was obligatory), so everyone knew that if you were sent to one of these units, you would have a really terrible term in the army. And the logic was that these three military units were supposed to stop the Turkish army, just to remind you, the second largest army in NATO, in case a cold war turned into a hot war. And according to Bulgarian military planning, 100% of the soldiers in these units would die.

So you can imagine that if you were sent to serve there, you would be trained to die. That was the general logic. On the other hand, while the border with NATO was very heavily guarded, Yugoslavia was the window to the West, the source of hope and escape.

There are even very interesting documentaries about people who managed to escape to the West, recalling their stories, how they managed to cross the border with Yugoslavia, how they managed to either be tricked or actually treated with compassion by the Bulgarian guards, who knew where these people were going. But more interestingly for the people of Bulgaria, Yugoslavia was the source of information about what was happening in the world. So all the Bulgarians installed huge antennas to try to catch Yugoslav television, children tried to watch Tom and Jerry, because New Paradiso was always on the agenda.

But what is more important is that this logic, for example, also went through the Romanian-Bulgarian border, whereas in Romania at that time, Romanian TV was broadcasting, only if I’m not wrong, for two hours a day. And Bulgarian TV was broadcasting the whole day. So all the Romanians that had access to this were trying to capture the Bulgarian signal, also to obtain certain information or at least entertain.

So this is just to show how, on the one hand, political boundaries played an important role and literally determined patterns of behaviour and, on the other hand, how social needs were capable of transgressing these boundaries even without the support of the communist authorities. I particularly remember the context of Tom and Jerry. I was eight years old when I put up a 4.10 metre aerial.

My colleague, who was 10, showed me how to connect it to the TV. And then it turned out, because Sofia is literally 40 kilometres in a straight line from the Yugoslavian border, that the Bulgarian authorities were jamming that signal very badly. So you could literally watch Tom and Jerry, but through a heavy snowfall.

You could barely see the outlines of these creatures. And we sat with our noses to the screen, because it was better than watching the Bulgarian cartoons. Apart from that, of course, the end of the Cold War brought profound changes.

And they had a huge impact on the region. Borders that were only formal before became real borders, for example between Serbia and Kosovo. But all the countries of the Western Balkans also ended up at some point with physical borders between people, which disrupted these natural human processes.

At the same time, new perspectives emerged. And here, in the context of the previous panel and in the context of one of the discussions we had during the coffee break, it’s not that borders don’t matter. They matter, they matter very much. They determine, at the national level, the perspective of a centre and a periphery. But what is important, and we see this to this day, is that they profoundly shape relations in the Balkans. But what is new and what has emerged is the perspective of the European Union.

This perspective was completely absent until the end of the 1990s. And borders were sacrosanct. You could never touch them, you could never discuss them.

You probably all know that one of the tacit agreements among politicians about the Balkans is that borders should not be changed. Because they know that the domino effect can lead to an immediate eruption of tensions in the region. And I think it is extremely important to learn that.

We see it to this day. We see the Bulgarian veto on North Macedonia. We see the temptation to use history in Croatian-Serbian relations. There are many other examples of this. Slovenian-Croatian relations in the context of enlargement. All these issues are part of the political line.

What the European Union has brought, however, is a model that allows these sacrosanct issues to be de-prioritised in matters of daily functioning. And when we talk about the issue of Hungary and Ukraine, it is not that there are no interests to be protected and every single country has the right to do so. We were in Bulgaria literally a month ago and the first thing they asked us was whether Poland could block Ukraine in the context of its European integration because of historical reasons.

And no matter how absurd that sounds, you can see that the temptation to use this issue in domestic Polish politics is quite strong. So in that sense it’s easy to say: “No, no, it doesn’t matter!”, but the temptation to use it for these short-term benefits is really strong. At the same time, what appears to be this essence is that for those countries that have joined the European Union and become part of it, the Bulgarian and Romanian experience is significant because actually Schengen is really necessary between these two countries.

Not even for the sake of the European Union as a whole, but for the sake of their own relations. About, and I’m quoting Vladimir’s information here, about 2 million Romanians pass through Bulgaria every year to go to Greece. Just to give you an idea, Bulgaria has 6 million.

So a third of them pass through the country. On the other hand, whenever a country outside the EU, like Serbia, has internal problems, it seems that the shortest way to the EU is through Romania. So we need these efficiencies, these facilities.

The countries that are in the EU can still use their interests and still push their national agendas, but it is a question of deprioritising these tensions that prevent us from working together. And this is a lesson that not only the Balkans should learn, but also the Hungarians in the context of Ukraine. Thank you, thank you very much.

Actually, you have answered my question, because my last question would be something like: what would be the cure for this problem? Because we see that this is not a question of geography, I mean all these borders. It is a question of politics, of history, of migration processes, not only the current one, because we have seen a lot of migrations in the Balkan region, like in the 19th and 20th century. We know that.

So I would like to ask the same question. Other panellists, do you think that European integration is enough to solve the problems that we, I mean the Balkan countries and people are facing right now? What’s your opinion? Vladimir, please let me know.

Can I start? First of all, let me make a small correction, because I didn’t communicate very clearly with Spasimir. Romanian tourists only in Bulgaria are more than two million people in 2023, while the Romanian tourists who pass through Bulgaria on their path to Turkiye or Greece are other millions in plus. So, Romanians are really a very traveling nation and Bulgaria is important for this reason, but you ask how, the way I understood the question, is the EU presence or role enough for positive transformation to happen with regards to borders and identities? I think of course it’s good that there is this idea of integration and synchronization of the countries in the region. It’s a very positive and promising idea.

The thing is that in my view, we see in the Bulgarian-Romanian relations, there is this issue that the proper dynamics of the societies, the proper internal drive for this synchronization, I think still is relatively low and the majority or the general change happens through what our partners encourage us to do or guarantee for us doing. I said I could speak a little bit more but maybe I could skip the fact that after the EU there was a lot of acceleration of travels, for example, because traveling was much easier. But the thing is that at the level of people there is, I think, still some inertia.

For example, we now have very good cooperation between Bulgaria and Romania in terms of security and defense. Of course, the two countries signed a strategic partnership declaration one year ago in March. So on a political level there are declarations, there are efforts that some new period in the relations takes place.

But I have been arguing that this somehow goes against the general tendency which has existed for decades, throughout the transition times, there was certain indifference between the two countries so a lot of people just are formed and teached, socialized in a way that they don’t really have any special curiosity or ambition or ability to cooperate with the other side of the river. So for me it’s not enough that some elites decide to cooperate and a political will exists.

For me, the people in our region are also the subject of any relationship, and for any relationship to have a deeper impact and to really move forward at a deeper level in society, there has to be the involvement of the people. For me, this means that there must be more individuals or organisations in Bulgaria and Romania, or in any other relationship in the region, who have the trust of both sides. And it has to be understood that this does not just mean that somebody accumulates some social capital and turns it into political or economic capital. I think there really has to be an understanding that social capital in the periphery, as Spasimir also mentions that we should discuss social capital, is at a low level. I think that’s one of the characteristics, at least in the kind of periphery that I observe. So if somebody wants to have bigger, more ambitious, more advanced relations between Bulgaria, Romania or any other country, there has to be an effort to increase the social capital, in other words the trust.

And here I think that the people or the organisations that are a kind of bridge of friendship, if we use the name of the bridge next to Ruse-Giurgiu, could really play a positive role in this transformation. So for me this is, let’s say, the hopeful part of the story, that democracy in the EU is theoretically not only about taking power and imposing a certain, let’s say, general line, but also about empowering people. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Do you agree? Let me know if you have the floor. Yes.

Labinot Hajdari: I would like to relate my comment to the colleague from Romania when he mentioned that, if I’m not mistaken, Russia is using the minority to create tensions. Unfortunately this is the same problem with Kosovo, inspired by Russia. Serbia is using very much Serbs, we call them non-majority communities according to the constitution, and the majority community to create tensions. They have become a kind of fence, let’s say, for them to fully integrate into Kosovo society.

Fortunately, my institution, the university where I teach, it’s a multi-ethnic university, 25 percent of the staff and students are from non-majority communities, including Serbs, but the EU integration process, yes, as I said at the beginning, EU Euro-Atlantic, or better to say Euro-Atlantic integration is the main mechanism to prevent Russian influence as well. But the European Union is the main donor in the Western Balkans, including here Serbia. On the other hand, just less than 300 kilometres from the capital of Kosovo, is the so-called Russian humanitarian centre, which according to their foreign ministry is basically a spy base.

So I think it is also necessary to speed up this EU integration process, because very often Western Balkan countries consider that the European Union uses double standards compared to the other regions that were integrated earlier. It is necessary to use not only the current but also the stick as well for Western Balkan countries who are not interested to embrace Western values and there is no other alternative, of course mutual cooperation is mandatory and is a key role for the future for lasting peace in the Western Balkans. Political dialogue is essential.

Mental borders, as you mentioned, are essential to overcome all the misunderstandings and stereotypes between the parties in the Western Balkans. We still don’t really know each other. The students from Kosovo don’t know yet the students from Serbia.

Spasimir Domaradzki: Again during the break we briefly exchanged some thoughts and Vladimir raised an argument that is extremely important in the context of our discussion about popular attitudes towards borders and how they shape people’s behaviour and are a source of producing and reproducing stereotypes and prejudices and perspectives and then I thought for a second about something that shocked me a long time ago.

When I was a student and I lived in Krakow I used to love to go for bike rides around the city and in the literally several kilometres outside the city limits there’s a little stream called Klujvoda and this stream as a natural barrier was the border between the Austrian and Russian empires. Imagine you are cycling and all of a sudden you see a sign with the two coats of arms of the Austrian and Russian Empires and you start asking yourself, where am I? And then you ask me what has to happen for this to change, and I’m very afraid that my answer is going to be very constructivist and anti-national, but apparently what changes the perspective of the border is the disappearance of the political subject that makes it persist. So if that’s a conclusion we can draw from this panel, it’s not a very positive one.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

I know we are running out of time, but are there any questions from the audience? Yes, please.

Thank you very much. It’s not really a question but I would like to draw the comments because Vladimir his position about the relations between Romania and Bulgaria it’s right but I think that also the perception between our people can influence the political cooperation and I think that also the political cooperation can influence the economic cooperation.

And unfortunately the general perception in Romania about Bulgaria and the Bulgarian people is that they are acting in favour of the Russian Federation just because they have a lot of instability or a lot of political instability and because it’s about Bulgaria’s position in relation to European security threats and so on. But you should also recognise that Romania lost territory to Bulgaria at the end of the Second World War. Also in North Dobrogea, I’m from Constanta County and Vladimir knows very well that in my country people really believe that South Dobrogea is still part of the Romanian territory.

Regarding the bridges and our common borders, I should add that the Romanians and the Romanian government see the Dobrogea river as a natural barrier between the European civilisation and the Russian civilisation. And unfortunately the Balkans are being used by the Russian Federation as a weapon against European security and stability. And I don’t know if Romania will decide to cooperate with Bulgaria for new bridges or for the development of their common borders, but I think that Vladimir is right, the Russian invasion in Ukraine make us realise the importance of political cooperation, finally we signed a treaty recognising each other as vital partners, thank you.

I don’t think it was a question, it was a kind of comment. Do you have anything to add?

I could answer yes. You know, I’ve been writing about Romanian issues since 2009, if I’m not mistaken, so you can imagine that this qualification of Bulgaria as a Russian satellite, formed during the Soviet or socialist era, I’ve come across it many times and I’ve also written articles about it.

I think that the fact that Bulgaria is in the EU and NATO means something, so in my opinion it’s rather the Romanians who still haven’t developed the necessary sensitivities or notions to understand what has been going on in the south of the Danube in “the uncivilised part of Europe”, as somebody thinks. And part of my effort is also to provide some notions or doors to enter, to study, to understand and perhaps to discover that Europe has many faces. Thank you very much.

Do we have another question? Yes, okay. So let’s go, because we really have to finish the panel, so thank you very much. I would like to thank all of our panelists.

So let’s thank them.

Photo: Vladimir Mitev speaking during the event, among Konrad Pawlowski (left), Spasimir Domaradzki (right) and Labinot Hajdari (caught at another photo) (source: The Institute for Central Europe)

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