Bulgaria's eurozone accession campaign smeared with false claims

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Bulgaria's eurozone accession campaign smeared with false claims   False information about Bulgaria's eurozone accession has been skewing the national conversation around adopting the euro.  READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/04/25/bulgarias-eurozone-accession-campaign-smeared-with-false-claims  Subscribe to our channel. Euronews is available on Dailymotion in 12 languages

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00:00What claims are being shared about Bulgaria's Eurozone accession?

00:08While Bulgaria progresses on its path to join the Eurozone by 2026, disinformation surrounding

00:13this has been spreading further, as members of the far-right pro-Russian revival party

00:18disseminate false claims.

00:19In an April interview with Bulgarian commentator Martin Karpovsky, known for spreading pro-Kremlin

00:25narratives, revival MEP Rado Lykova claimed that European savings could be seized if not

00:31spent within a specific timeframe. Lykova added that Europe was discussing using this

00:36money to fund military projects. This is part of a wider disinformation narrative which falsely

00:43accuses Brussels of wanting to dip into taxpayers' savings.

00:47In reality, European savings are protected by a number of legal mechanisms and cannot be

00:52seized indiscriminately. The revival party's leader, Kostadin Kostadinov, has also asserted

00:58that joining the Eurozone would lead to Bulgarians losing their savings. He said that the lev2euro

01:03exchange rate, which will come into place once the euro has been introduced, would be less

01:07profitable. This is false as the Bulgarian parliament has set a fixed exchange rate before

01:12the change happens.

01:13Meanwhile, experts told Euroverify that disinformation around the Eurozone and Bulgaria has been shared

01:19by actors who serve Russia's strategic interests, adding that the Bulgarian population is particularly

01:24vulnerable to it.

01:25Anti-Eurozone disinformation campaigns are really effective in Bulgaria and a key factor in enabling

01:31these types of campaigns to be effective is the low media literacy in the country. According

01:38to a 2023 Eurobarometer survey, only 31% of Bulgarians possess basic digital skills, which is far below

01:46the EU average of 54%. And this gap makes the public more susceptible to fear-based narratives.

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