Ekaterina Zaharieva

Ekaterina Zaharieva is a former foreign minister, a politician and diplomat with a “long ministerial career”: in 2013 she was appointed minister of regional development and public works; in 2014, under Prime Minister Georgi Bliznashki, she became deputy prime minister, focusing on economic policy and administrative reform, before becoming minister of justice in the second Boyko Borissov government, and, from 2017-2021, foreign affairs minister (Euronews). Bulgarian news sites describe Zaharieva as having a “distinguished background, having served as a national representative, deputy prime minister in three different cabinets, and as minister of foreign affairs, justice, and regional development” (source) (source). 

Zaharieva’s academic background is in law, she worked as a lawyer then legal advisor to the Ministry of Environment and Water, before going into politics in 2009 (wikipedia). In 2018, Euractiv reported that foreign minister and former Justice Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva was named by a whistleblower in a passports-for-cash scandal (Euractiv).

Party positions/ National government record

“Bulgaria is in political crisis after the latest attempt to form a minority government led by the centre-right GERB party failed earlier this month. That brings Bulgaria closer to another round of elections, pushing discussions over EU commissioners or their portfolios off the table.” (Euronews) Bulgaria now faces another election in October 2024, the seventh parliamentary election in three years (Politico). Interim prime minister Dimitar Glavchev, part of a caretaker government (led by the conservatives, GERB, until elections are held on 27 October), finally made its Commissioner nominations on 30 Aug, being the first country to nominate a male and female Commissioner candidate (Euronews).

Zaharieva’s party, GERB (EPP), is a conservative populist party (source), which has faced numerous corruption scandals in recent years of governing, causing it repeated difficulties in forming coalitions as other parties have refused “to form an alliance with GERB due to corruption allegations and the party’s alleged failure to implement reforms when it held power (APNews). GERB finished first in the June 2024 elections and proposed a minority government, but this was rejected by the Bulgarian parliament (Euronews).

In August 2024, Bulgarian parliament made moves to pass a law to ban so-called gay propaganda in schools, mirroring Russian and Hungarian laws, which von der Leyen was urged to condemn (Politico).