Bulgaria, EU Member

Societal characteristics and infrastructure: do any conflicts exist within ethnic/religious/cultural characteristics of Bulgaria? How do these societal conflicts impact the functionality of the state?

Bulgaria experiences a great deal of conflicts within item ethnic/ religious and cultural characterizes that impact negatively on the progress and economic growth of the state. To begin with, the country has experienced and is experiencing protracted social conflict. Prolonged violence and struggle between communal groups for basic needs, security, recognition, fair access to political institutions, and economic participation are enough to justify the conflict that exists between Bulgaria ethic/ social cultural and religion (Trauner, 2009).

There is severe hostility among the immigrants and the Turkish over identify issues. This bad blood relation has resulted in conflict. Moreover the conflicts have been spearheaded by frustration of human need for justice and security. Such rifts have brought a lot of fear among the ethnic communities of Bulgarian minority. Turks believe they are different from other ethnic communities. The major causes of conflict include basic survival needs, political participation identity needs and physical and psychological needs. The minority groups think that their security and representation are limited (Racovi%u0163%u0103, 2011).

The country experiences high rates of unemployment cases resulting into low incomes, which lead to economic problems. The economic problems are caused by social and political changes, low level of education, lack of extension and knowledge in home ethics, increased consumption of alcohol, inadequate diminishing healthcare services and social services, unhealthy nutrition and poor health in general. Deficiencies in rural infrastructure, social isolation, and lack of social and cultural activities in villages

Analyze infrastructural and economic issues facing Bulgaria regarding areas such as healthcare, education, welfare and military/security resources.

Education in Bulgarian is supported by the government though the ministry of education and science. For every child, education is compulsory from seven years to sixteen years. Both private and public schools exist, and they compete successfully in providing education services to the Bulgarian society. The bigger community of Bulgarian has only 51 higher education institutions that offer post and undergraduate degrees. Despite education being compulsory, the amount of school dropouts is high due to limited education resources and infrastructure. Big numbers of students are enrolled at primary level but only small percentages graduate to high school. In adequacy of learning class rooms and small number of teachers has negatively impacted the educational sector in Bulgaria. More money is needed to improve educational infrastructure including incorporation of ICT for learning (Trauner, 2009).

The infrastructure in health system is not standard. Physicians are well trained but the hospitals and clinics are not equipped and maintained to meet US or western European standards especially in the villages. Basic medical supplies and over the counter and medical prescriptions are available but high specialized facilities and treatment may not be available or obtainable. Equipments to deal with serious medical problems cost a lot of dollars which are not available to purchase them. In summary the infrastructure of healthcare is poor in Bulgaria. A lot of improvement and funding are required if health issues are to be met. Bulgarian roads are under developed. There are many potholes on the roads which make driving in Bulgaria dangerous. Fatality rate in Bulgaria is high because of poor conditions of the roads (Trauner, 2009).

The Bulgarian economic issues extend to military and armed forces. Implementing an IP router based network which will depend on information technology for policy modernization, doctrine, staff’s structures, command and control and communication and information system is a big problem. Lack of implementation of this technology managed communication impairs communication in defense and military operations. Military infrastructure is not well developed. High level communication systems which are secure and fast to link all the military headhunters across the country are underdeveloped. This puts the security in jeopardy. To ensure secure and timely information exchange both secure voice service and TCP/IP router data transmission are needed (Tanchev and Belov, 2008).

The level of unemployment in Bulgaria is very high around 13 % in 2010. Unemployed youth were about 37 % in 2007 together with the employment law which hinders employers from employing people without contact terms. Lack of proper infrastructure in the economic sector has led to high rates of unemployment and this impacts on the welfare of many Bulgarians. The business environment is also challenged by complex systems of registration which downs start-ups and ties up considerable amounts of enterprises and public administration resources (Racovi%u0163%u0103, 2011).

EU involvement: What influence does your country possess/exert regarding EU organizations and what has been its role in these organizations? Has involvement changed over time?

The influence of Bulgaria in EU organizations is open. As a member of EU, Bulgaria will receive financial aids from the developed EU members to boost its economic growth and agricultural policy. In the financial year 2007-2013, Bulgaria is doing to benefit from European regional development fund, European social fund and cohesion fund to help boost Bulgaria to other European nation’s standards. The resources are directed towards improving the economy by promoting employment, social inclusion, development of labor market, better education and by increasing productivity (Racovi%u0163%u0103, 2011).

The involvement of Bulgaria in EU organizations is the major reason for the development of the anti-corruption policy.  Bulgaria continues to fight with high corruption and embezzlement of government funds. Bulgaria has been involved in the process of arranging for the agreement between EU member states to become part of the second stage of EU’s fifth enlargement. Bulgaria has been granted the right to be represented in front of the EU commission with commissioner (Spirova, 2008).