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Environmentalists against the Environment: When Good Intentions Are Not Enough

This article is published in collaboration with the Serbo-Croatian portal Bilten. Debates over natural conservation have been at the center of public attention in Bulgaria. They usually appear as clashes between investors and environmentalists over tourist resort projects. Media represents them as a contradiction between concerns with the employment of citizens, living in the vicinity […]

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The Solidarity of the Business Class, or Building Anti-Environmentalist Alliances in Bulgaria

This article was published in cooperation with the Serbo-Croatian portal Bilten. The campaign to save the Bulgarian national Park Pirin has over the past several months become the major source of protest in the country and even brought the attention of international media and NGOs. Instead of embarrassingly shelving their plans for building on the […]

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To Stop the Engine of Inequality: a Bulgarian Campaign for Tax Reform

Preface by Georgi Medarov: After months, if not years, of relative quiescence, progressive politics in Bulgaria has been thrust into national visibility by a new campaign for tax justice supported by a wide coalition of activists, NGOs, unions and small center-left and left parties. At this stage, its main activity has been focused on generating […]

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Banning the Veil in Bulgaria

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been published in collaboration with the Serbo-Croat web portal Bilten. Last April Pazardzhik, a Bulgarian town with a population of about 70,000, banned Muslim women from wearing veils. Pazardzhik was followed by Stara Zagora, and proposals for introducing similar prohibitions were made in over a third of […]

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Landgrabs and the EU

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been published in collaboration with the Serbo-Croat web portal Bilten.Org In the past few years, particularly after the 2007-8 world food price crisis, there has been a lot of attention to the global expansion of large-scale acquisitions of farmland, or what is usually referred to as land […]

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Bulgarian youth in the maelstrom of political struggles

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been published in collaboration with the Balkan web-portal Bilten.org. The publication in Serbo-Croatian is to be found here. In Bulgaria there is a (neo)liberal hegemony over student politics that hasn’t been challenged up until last year’s university occupation. This process, however, is not that clear cut, the […]

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The unfolding of the Bulgarian political crisis of 2013

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been published in collaboration with the new Balkan web-portal Bilten.org. The publication in Serbo-Croatian is to be found here. The upcoming EP elections will be a test for all major parties in Bulgaria, after a year of constant protests aiming to challenge the status quo. In February […]