When it comes to a number of key benchmarks Bulgaria ranks among Sub-Saharan African countries and it has been getting increasingly difficult for it to fit into the "European landscape", President Rumen Radev said today at a meeting with students in Plovdiv. As problematic areas he listed income, social inequality, crime, corruption, aggression, high mortality, freedom of speech and quality of life.

"Bulgaria has failed almost completely in using the opportunities that the EU membership provided ... Our country is not only sustainably stuck at the bottom of the EU chart, but it is also lagging behind former socialist countries in which conditions were similar some years ago," the president said.