Zhivko Minkov

The crisis cycle after 2019 has already led to a significant social conse- quences. It has once again shown the need of reforms into the Bulgarian social policy. Such kind of crisis periods have always been challenging. On one side they demand adequate and timely crisis-management. On other side they are a “window of opportunity” for implementation of more ambitious and far-reach- ing reforms. In this context the study describes the social consequences of the crisis – cycle and tries to explore the policy measures undertaken to address them through the work of the Bulgarian parliament.

The study illustrates and analyses the main problems and political challenges faced by the funded pension pillars in Bulgaria. It is motivated by the specific direction of the pension debate, which resumed in the country and by the recent reform attempts that contravene the multiplier design and complementary balance between the solidarity and funded approaches of meeting the retirement risk. Approaches on which the new pension model was developed after 1999. The main goal of the study is to put under critical analysis and evaluation the development and the leading problems of the funded pension pillars in Bulgaria and to discuss possible reform steps and directions for their future evolution.

The study is analyzing the presidential election campaign through the place and level of topicality given to the social problematic in the pre-election debates. By doing this, the study follows in the train of several research tasks that allow the systematic analysis of the leading political topics and themes in the pre-election debates. First one is, to describe the specific political accents and topics, which dominated the pre-election campaign and to underline the factors that contributed to their domination. The second task is, to analyze the degree of importance and the way of articulation of the social problematic in the pre-election campaign.