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Bulgarian party suggests country leave EU, join BRICS — media

Revival also insists on delaying Bulgaria’s eurozone membership until at least 2043 and calls for a referendum on the issue

BRUSSELS, September 5. /TASS/. Bulgaria’s Revival political party has suggested that the country should leave the European Union, abandon plans to enter the eurozone and instead seek BRICS membership, the Euractiv news website reports.

"If we want to have a future, we have no place in these agonizing structures, which are the EU in this format and NATO. If the EU is not reformed, we must leave it because we will not die with it", Revival leader Kostadin Kostadinov said, as cited by the media outlet.

Revival MP Tsoncho Ganev, in turn, said that BRICS was "a richer club" than Western countries. According to Euractiv, politicians representing the party call for Bulgaria’s BRICS membership, while the party "has begun sending representatives to the organization’s forums." In particular, its members took part in the BRICS International Municipal Forum in Moscow on August 27-28.

Revival also insists on delaying Bulgaria’s eurozone membership until at least 2043 and calls for a referendum on the issue. However, the country’s authorities maintain plans to join the eurozone by mid-2025 at the latest, even though only half of the country’s people support the idea. Meanwhile, experts believe that Bulgaria is unlikely to enter the eurozone before 2026.

The eurozone, the European Union’s currency union, brings together 20 nations. The countries that have not yet adopted the euro as their primary currency include Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Romania, Poland and Sweden.

The BRICS group, established in 2006, first expanded in 2011, when South Africa joined the four founding nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China). Five new members (Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia) formally became full-fledged members of the BRICS group on January 1. Russia assumed BRICS’ one-year rotating chairmanship on the same day. Russia’s presidency features more than 250 various events, with a BRICS summit in Kazan in October 2024 being the central one.

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