Visiting Germany, Bulgarian President Plevneliev moots ‘Museum of State Security’
Bulgarian President Rossen Plevneliev, meeting his German counterpart Joachim Gauck in Berlin, has floated the idea of a Museum of State Security– analogous to Sofia’s Museum of Socialist Art– which could be completed in two years, Plevneliev said.
Gauck, president of Germany since March 2012, was from 1990 to 2000 Germany’s federal commissioner in charge of the archives of the former communist East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi.
The job entailed preserving the archives and investigating the crimes of East Germany’s secret police and intelligence services. Gauck’s name was received into the language, colloquially, regarding the process of being scrutinised for Stasi connections – being “Gaucked”.
Bulgaria has had its own process, through the Dossier Commission established by statute, of exposing former agents and collaborators with the country’s communist-era secret services.
The Dossier Commission has disclosed the identities of former State Security agents and collaborators in government ministries, state agencies, the media and in the senior leadership of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.
The country opened a Museum of Socialist Art in the Bulgarian capital city in September 2011, in a move not without debate and controversy.
Plevneliev met Gauck on July 3 on the second day of a two-day visit to Germany hosted by his counterpart.
The Bulgarian President addressed a business forum in Berlin, expressing confidence that German investments in Bulgaria would receive fresh impetus, Plevneliev’s office said in a media statement.
Plevneliev said that Bulgaria and Germany had set a record in their bilateral economic co-operation in 2011, when it reached 4.5 billion euro.
Bulgarian exports to Germany had increased threefold in 10 years, according to Plevneliev, a fluent German-speaker who spent part of his young adulthood in Germany before returning to Bulgaria to become a successful entrepreneur in the private sector. He was Regional Development Minister in Bulgaria’s centre-right government from July 2009 before being elected the country’s President, taking office in January 2012.
He said that the increase in Bulgarian exports to Germany showed that his country was producing more and better goods.
Plevneliev’s office said that at their talks, Plevneliev and Gauck had exchanged views on growth and employment measures and on reforms being undertaken in the European Union.Bulgaria had chosen the course of further resources for accelerated growth and structural reforms, Plevneliev said.
(Photo: V Nikolov/president.bg)
