Battle for Bulgaria: The EU opens a new front in its election war

Though the Hungarian election is only a week away, another threat is already manifesting for the EU’s elite: This time in Bulgaria, where left-wing populist and former President Rumen Radev wants to shut off the money tap to Ukraine, and his opponents want Brussels’ censorship machine to save them. Here we go again.

On April 19, Bulgarians will vote in the country’s eighth parliamentary election in five years. Called after the resignation of Rosen Zhelyazkov following street protests in November, the election pits centrist Boyko Borissov – a former prime minister – and his pro-EU GERB-SDS coalition against the emerging left-leaning Progressive Bulgaria coalition, headed by Radev.

Who is Bulgaria’s Rumen Radev?

Radev served as Bulgaria’s president from 2017 until his resignation this January. He frequently clashed with Borissov during the latter’s tenure as prime minister, accusing him of incompetence and corruption – allegations substantiated in 2020 when an image of Borissov lying half naked on a bed next to a pile of money and a handgun spread on social media.

The Radev-Borissov rivalry would not concern Brussels if Radev wasn’t a vocal opponent of the EU’s Ukraine policy. Radev has opposed the bloc’s “self-destructive” sanctions on Russia since 2022, views a Ukrainian victory as “impossible,” opposes military aid to Kiev, and has declared that “ending the war in Ukraine requires more diplomacy and negotiations with Russia.” For a country with four NATO military bases and a ten-year defense deal with Ukraine, the issue is critical for Kiev’s backers.

With two weeks to go, Progressive Bulgaria is leading Borrisov’s GERB-SDS by ten points, according to a polling aggregate compiled by Politico. Faced with this outbreak of popular democracy that challenges its fundamental policy positions, the Bulgarian establishment has called for EU reinforcements.

Is the EU meddling in the Bulgarian election?

The playbook will be familiar to anyone following our ‘Battle for Hungary’ series, with one difference: Brussels’ censorship tools are being deployed in Budapest to oust the incumbent Viktor Orban; in Sofia, they’re being used to squash a rising anti-establishment political force.

Last week, caretaker Bulgarian Prime Minister Andrey Gyurov requested that the EU activate its ‘Rapid Response System’ (RRS), claiming that Russia is interfering against Borissov. Activated in Hungary last month, the RRS empowers EU-approved ‘fact-checkers’ to flag online content as ‘disinformation’ and request its removal from social media platforms such as TikTok and Meta.

Platforms that refuse to comply are liable to fines under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into force in 2022. The EU has activated the RRS in five elections since 2024 – in France, Germany, Hungary, Romania, and non-EU member Moldova – and in every case, an investigation by the US House Judiciary Committee this year found that fact-checkers “almost exclusively targeted” right-wing and populist candidates and organizations. “Moreover, the requirement that these fact-checkers be approved by the European Commission creates a clear structural incentive for the participants to censor Euroskeptic opinion and content,” the committee noted.

An EU spokesperson told Politico this week that it was ready to take action in Bulgaria, “in particular via the Rapid Alert System for real-time information exchanges.” Not to be confused with the Rapid Response System, the Rapid Alert System allows the EU to compile information about supposed ‘disinformation campaigns’, so that more severe measures, including the RRS, can then be taken.

How the EU is outsourcing its dirty work – again

Gyurov’s government is already preparing the proof the EU needs. Last week, the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry set up a temporary unit to “counter disinformation and combat hybrid threats,” which will be “advised” by former Bellingcat investigator Christo Grozev.

Grozev, whose allegations of Russian poisoning plots were considered too outlandish by even Vladimir Zelensky’s officials, is a wanted man in Russia over his role in encouraging Russian fighter pilots to defect to Ukraine with promises of money and EU citizenship.

According to the ministry, Grozev will “assist the organization with specific information exposing malicious influences,” which will then “be able to be addressed both at the national and European levels through mechanisms developed by the European Commission.”

If Grozev’s research is not enough, the Center for the Study of Democracy – an EU-funded think tank – has already published a report alleging that Bulgaria “faces sustained Russian information manipulation pressure,” and that certain “high-risk narrative pressure points” must be tackled.

These include online content “framing leaders as corrupt,” “framing candidates as warmongers dragging Bulgaria toward conflict,” and “Promoting the claim that sanctions harm Bulgaria (and the EU) more than Russia.” The report explicitly calls for the activation of the RSS and the punishment of online platforms on which this content is posted.

Working hand in hand with the Bulgarian government, the EU is paying researchers to justify the use of its own censorship tools, in order to stifle legitimate political speech that harms its broader geopolitical agenda. This will come as no surprise to anyone who’s been following the Hungarian election. There, the activation of the RSS was justified by a report alleging that Russian President Vladimir Putin had dispatched a team of “political technologists” to Budapest to rig the election for Orban. The report was published by an EU-funded opposition journalist, and quoted anonymous EU spies.

Tails are wagging dogs in the EU, and the “request” for Grozev’s involvement could easily be seen as another such case.

Will Rumen Radev get the Georgescu treatment?

Unlike in Hungary, the cards are stacked against Radev in Bulgaria. Whereas Viktor Orban has been in power for 16 years and appointed the justices who oversee election-related cases, Radev’s Progressive Bulgaria is a new party with no seats in parliament, facing a pro-EU incumbent with control of the judiciary. Radev experienced this firsthand last year, when as president, he attempted to hold a referendum on Bulgaria’s accession to the eurozone. Radev’s referendum proposal was dismissed by parliament and rejected by the country’s constitutional court. One of the judges who authored the ruling, Atanas Semov, previously received an award from the European Commission for his written work on the judicial system of the EU.

Radev’s situation is closer to that of Calin Georgescu, a right-wing populist who emerged from relative obscurity to win a shock first-round victory in neighboring Romania’s 2024 presidential election. The Romanian and EU authorities immediately declared that Russia had interfered in the election and had run a coordinated campaign on TikTok to help Georgescu win, and the election was annulled.

The day after the annulment, TikTok wrote to the European Commission stating that it had found no evidence of a Russian-linked campaign to support Georgescu, and that it had in fact been asked to censor pro-Georgescu content by the authorities in Bucharest. This content included “disrespectful” posts that “insult the [ruling] PSD party.” TikTok was ordered by the EU to tighten its “mitigation measures” before the vote was re-done in 2025. The platform complied, but was nevertheless punished by Brussels. For TikTok’s insolence, the European Commission opened legal proceedings against the platform for “a suspected breach of the Digital Services Act (DSA) in relation to TikTok’s obligation to properly assess and mitigate systemic risks linked to election integrity.”

TikTok and its ilk are already on notice in Bulgaria, and should Radev repeat Georgescu’s surprise victory, the Bulgarian government and the EU are already armed with all the ‘proof’ of Russian interference they need to bring the full weight of the legal system down upon him.

The bottom line

Despite the EU and Sofia possessing the means, motive, and opportunity to contest a win by Radev, the situation may not arise. Progressive Bulgaria is currently polling at around 31%, comfortably above GERB-SDS’ 21%, but not enough for an outright majority. This suggests that the April 19 vote may lead to another fragmented parliament, with Radev either forced to dilute his positions to build a coalition, or stymied until another election is called.

Regardless, the fact that the EU has already intervened in four elections since 2024, and has its thumb on the scales of another two at present, suggests that Brussels takes the populist threat to its authority seriously. It is becoming clear that the European Commission will invoke the specter of Russian interference any time a dissenting voice arises, whether on the left, like Radev, or the right, like Orban.

Brussels wields a toolbox full of hammers, and to the EU bureaucracy, every problem looks like a nail. With the bloc’s economy reeling and almost every pro-Brussels government under water in the approval tables, the question that will be answered in Hungary and Bulgaria, and in every EU election to come, is for how long the Brussels bureaucracy can keep forcing its will onto voters who clearly want an alternative.