The KAS and FMD media experts presented on 10 June the monitoring of the Bulgarian media during the European elections 2014 at a press conference in Sofia.

Here the main findings:

• The leader of the opposition, Boyko Borissov (GERB), was able to increase his presence in print media. He thus regained the position of the most-mentioned politician.
• The election campaign for the European Parliament did not polarize the Bulgarian media more than usual.
• European topics only played a minor role, whereas national politics prevailed.

"The media coverage of the election campaign was relatively calm, free of major scandals and rhetorical exchange of blows", said Orlin Spassov, head of FMD, during the joint press conference with Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung. "There weren’t many interesting topics and debates that could have encouraged the people to vote, either." The voter turnout on May 25 reached 36 percent. According to the analysis of FMD, EU-related topics hardly played a role in the political debates. Media coverage as well as the people’s voting behaviour was rather shaped by the difficult political situation in the country. For the study commissioned by KAS and FMD to the agency Market Links more than 7.000 news pieces taken from four newspapers and four TV stations between January and May 2014 have been analyzed.

Winner of the election and leader of the opposition in the Bulgarian parliament, Boyko Borissov, has been distinctly more present in the media than the year before. He was mentioned 63 percent more often than his socialist opponent Sergey Stanishev and 57 percent more often than Prime Minister Plamen Oresharski. They were closely followed by TV moderator Nicolay Barekov and his new party "Bulgaria Without Censorship". Borissov’s party GERB also regained the position of the most-mentioned political party, ahead of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), which receives most of its votes from the Turkish minority. "GERB won the elections even though the party spent less money for media campaigns than others. BSP lost despite their high financial effort", emphasizes Spassov.

According to FMD, there were positive approaches in order to create a fairer election reporting. The Council for Electronic Media (SEM) followed the election campaign with an own monitoring. Moreover, the new electoral law created better possibilities for smaller parties to finance their campaigns. However, the distinction between editorial content and advertising was not always clear. Christian Spahr, head of KAS Media Program South East Europe, sums up: "The coverage of the European elections was less polarized than that of domestic policy – but also rather dull. Bulgaria is a Europe-friendly country, but the reporting did not increase the interest in European issues. The lack of independence of the media has still not been abolished. There is a need for more transparency when it comes to media financing."

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