Bulgarian political parties and European integration: from anticommunism to Euroscepticism

In this article, we review the political developments in Bulgaria since the fall of communism in 1989, including the process of European integration that it underwent. We pay a particular attention to the positions that political parties in the country take with respect to the country’s membership in the European Union (EU). The place of the EU in the profiles of Bulgarian political parties is assessed through quantitative data available from the Manifesto Project. The qualitative discussion of the extent of European Union support within each of the major players in Bulgaria’s party system adds to the quantitative data and provides the details on the specifies of Bulgarian socio-economic and socio-cultural Euroscepticism. We conclude that although Bulgarian political elite continues to have a pro-European orientation, Bulgarian Euroscepticism is already part of the party competition, and it is here to stay.