Bulgaria's decision to block North Macedonian accession talks with the EU is being portrayed as a result of how the two neighbours view their history and language. A Friendship Treaty between the two is being used to raise tensions rather than alleviate them.

Questions are being asked after over a hundred days of mass protest in Bulgaria. What has been achieved and what does the future hold?

The EU reaction to the continuing protests in Bulgaria has been quite ambiguous.

A string of scandals could signal the end of Borissov's ten year long rule.

There are rising concerns that drinking water in the Pernik area has been deviated for industrial use by a local factory and a private hydropower plant with the government’s blessings.

EU flags are present for another year as Todor Zhivkov's birth is celebrated in Pravets.

Bulgarian state institutions compete in disseminating falsehoods.

A live streamed meeting between the Bulgarian Prime Minister and one of the lead candidates for the top job at the EU Commission raises doubts about the commitment to defend the rule of law in Europe.

In this second part of the two-part special podcast, Talk Eastern Europe dissects the results of the European Parliamentary elections in the region of Central and Eastern Europe.

The rise of the far-right in Bulgaria has led to an increase in xenophobia. The European People's Party is facing a troublesome trend among some of its members.

In recent years, Bulgarians have gained better clarity about what happened during communism because of the efforts of researchers who dared dig up the dirt and make their findings available to a broader audience. And it is only now that the crimes of communism have been included in the mandatory school curriculum. This transparency is essential for understanding the political processes in Bulgaria post-1989.

I was born in Bulgaria in 1985, but I first learned about the particularities of communism in an academic setting in 2003 when I started university in the United States and enrolled in various classes on political science and history. Until then, my understanding of communism was entirely based on conversations with my family and the obscure samizdat books which my grandfather kept in his library.

Despite more than five hundred years of Turkish rule, the majority of present-day Bulgarians demonise and reject “non-Bulgarian” – that is, Turkish, Muslim, or Roma – influences in their history and culture. While the Bulgarian government’s harshest policies of ethnic cleansing concluded with the fall of communism, this exclusivist narrative of Bulgarian national history nevertheless continues to discriminate against such communities.