European parliament elections will be held on May 25. Bulgaria will elect 17 out of the 751 MEPs. They will determine the direction of European policy in the next five years. MEPs will elect the President of the European Commission which means that the elections will be a battle for the future of Europe. What are the trends and expectations in Europe at the backdrop of growing populism?

Political scientist Prof. Anthony Galabov, who is also head of the Bulgarian version of the online test elections - EUvox 2014 (www.euvox.eu/bg) gave an interview for Radio Bulgaria. The multilingual web platform helps citizens from across the EU find out which of the parties share their own views.

"Some of the political powers will struggle for Europe while others aim at better positions in their own countries,” the professor says. “Apparently nationalistic populism attracts attention due to radical talk of quick and easy solutions to complex problems. This actually means low trust and huge gaps in the dialogue between citizens and politicians. The big question is if Bulgarian voters would understand that they do not vote to decide who should go to Brussels but to decide Europe’s future direction of development. Profanation of these elections is part of the soft anti - EU strategy, which does not want to confront with the EU principles directly but tries to undermine it."

What are the possible directions for Europe’s development?

"Europe is the biggest world power. Whenever I say this I meet misunderstanding and confusion. Actually, at the moment the economy of the 28 Member States is the most powerful in the world. It is much more powerful than that of the U.S., not to mention China and other major centers of influence. The question is whether the EU will work together and expand the scope of cooperation or will remain in a state of loose connections between member states. The big problem is cooperation in the EU. Major EU manufacturers prefer to outsource production to third countries. At the same time, large external manufacturers try to enter the European market. A small increase in cooperation between EU countries producing similar products, cooperating in the use of resources and energy, will affect positively the effectiveness of the European Union. In my opinion there is a problem with the propaganda of the risk for Europe becoming a super state. This is not serious as the entire EU budget is less than 5 % of the total GDP of the 28 countries. To have a real strong federation, it must have a budget of over 35-40 percent of the total GDP. The truth is that European citizens must decide in what direction we want to move on with our common European project."

How would you respond to the statement that EU countries are developing at different speeds?

"There are no different gears. There are just various degrees of integrity and initiative. In the framework of what initiatives did Bulgaria declare its own interests? How many times did Bulgaria manage to voice a clear position on a certain topic? When a state cannot show what it supports or not, it becomes isolated. The problem is not in the various speeds of development but the various degrees of integrity and initiative. It is up to us to solve this issue.”

Will tension in Ukraine affect the future of the EU?

"There is a very clear indication of this. For the past 10 years the EU has been speaking of a common energy policy, without forgetting the huge interests that oppose such a move. In the last three weeks the current EP achieved more than for the past 4 years in this direction. The continuous risk for energy deliveries has led to swift developments and setting priorities in the sphere. Europe actually demonstrated it can assess the situation very fast and react accordingly.”

English version: Alexander Markov