Balkan Insight Opinion: In Dysfunctional Bulgaria, Disinformation Thrives – and Spills Over Into EU
Opinion at Balkan Insight, by Alexandra Karppi, Research and Communications Manager at the BFMI, and Vanesa Valcheva, Operations and Projects Coordinator at BFMI
Bulgaria’s political chaos has created a media vacuum in which Kremlin-led narratives metastasize – and the solution is not a new EU media law but better enforcement of existing rules.
Research shows that Bulgarian citizens are more vulnerable to disinformation than their European counterparts. Public opinion surveys point to a country deeply distrustful of authorities and susceptible to conspiratorial thinking. Bulgaria also has the highest rate of news avoidance and the lowest rate of media literacy in Europe, with only a third of the population possessing basic digital skills.
Driving these social trends is an institutional story that Brussels would do well to heed as the long-awaited European Media Freedom Act, EMFA, goes into effect. Bulgaria’s trajectory shows that disinformation thrives where institutions are visibly weak and democratic processes performative. Such captured media environments demand more than an ever-expanding body of legislation. What Europe needs now is a genuine commitment to enforcing the standards it has already set.
Bulgaria is emerging from a prolonged political crisis, marked by seven national elections in just three years and revolving-door governments. This instability has undermined media freedom and the country’s fight against disinformation. Bulgaria’s government has failed to develop a national disinformation strategy, and the work of a key multi-stakeholder body, the Bulgarian Coalition Against Disinformation, has been frozen since 2023 due to lack of political engagement.
In July, the Council for Electronic Media failed for the third time to elect a new director for Bulgarian National Television, BNT, leaving the incumbent pro-government figure of Emil Koshlukov in charge.
He has faced repeated calls to resign since taking over in 2019, accused of giving more air time to the ruling party – especially around elections – and of sacking journalists without due cause. The network recently was criticized for placing a documentary on Russian disinformation in a late-night time slot with the lowest possible viewership.
These dysfunctions are not isolated policy failures. They reflect a deeper erosion of democratic institutions that began with authorities’ failure to respond meaningfully to the 2020 anti-corruption protests, when Bulgarians demanded a judicial overhaul that has yet to materialize.
In this vacuum, disinformation has metastasized, not as a spontaneous grassroots phenomenon but as a by-product of media capture and performative governance. Politicians and prosecutors regularly deploy incendiary claims to win short-term narrative skirmishes, turning both traditional and social media into weapons in an endless credibility war, in which truth becomes collateral damage.
Pedestrians in central Sofia. Photo: European Parliament.
Networks of politically-connected media owners have long weaponized traditional media to buy favour and attack their opponents, much of their activity concealed through shell companies and opaque corporate structures. Now the same dynamics play out on Facebook, Telegram and Tiktok, thanks to many of the same funding streams.
The problem is that these platforms amplify disinformation at a rate and scale that Bulgaria’s seasoned fact-checking community simply cannot keep up with, and now fact checkers themselves are increasingly being targeted, alongside journalists.
Media capture is no longer about self-interested media owners with bad intentions – a premise that EMFA put at the centre of its Article 6 on ownership transparency. When media outlets become instruments in cyclical political warfare, media capture creates a toxic communication environment that not only undermines public trust, but truth itself.
Collective security challenge
Beyond generating voter fatigue, democratic doubts and generalized apathy, Bulgaria’s chronic instability has also made it a conduit for foreign influence. Last year, the Bulgarian collective BG Elves uncovered a network of 51 Bulgarian companies, linked by shadowy ownership chains, that facilitated a large-scale, Russian-funded social media campaign. The operation appears to have targeted Bulgaria’s October 2024 elections and mirrored the interference tactics seen in Romania’s 2024-25 election cycle.
The country’s adoption of the euro earlier this year reinforced Bulgaria’s position as both target and launch pad for Kremlin-aligned narratives. Constant elections and cabinet reshuffles had delayed the vote on the eurozone for years. When it finally passed this spring, a barrage of disinformation, originating from online Russian networks but also propagated by one of Bulgaria’s fastest-growing far-right parties, sparked protests over false claims that Bulgarians’ savings were being stolen, among others.
In recent years, Bulgaria has become a victim and a vector of disinformation. This phenomenon of information spillover is not incidental, representing instead a structural vulnerability in the EU’s collective security. When one member state becomes an entry point for Russian-backed narratives due to institutional decay, weak media oversight and endemic corruption, those narratives do not remain contained. They spread laterally through regional media markets, algorithmic recommendation systems, and transnational political movements that share ideological sympathies with Moscow’s messaging.
Fake news spreads where ‘no one’s in charge’
Pedestrians in central Sofia. Photo- European Parliament
Bulgaria’s disinformation crisis is less about fact-checking failure and more about institutional theatre, in which broken appointment processes and stalled reforms signal to citizens that no one is really in charge. Bulgaria’s experience makes clear that disinformation thrives in places where institutions are visibly dysfunctional, paralysed and performative.
To its credit, the European Commission has taken note of Bulgaria’s sluggish reform trajectory and issued a formal warning in May for the country’s failure to comply with the Digital Services Act, DSA. What remains missing, though, is a credible and sustained mechanism for accountability when laws like EMFA or the DSA are breached. Such mechanisms – whether horizontal or sanctions-based – are particularly crucial in EU member states like Bulgaria or Romania, where dysfunction enables broader threats to the European Union’s information space.
Nevertheless, the EMFA holds promise. If implemented with intent and rigour, it could insulate media from political capture, defund disinformation, and modernize media sustainability. But, for these efforts to address the root causes of disinformation in contexts like Bulgaria, Europe must build up the capacity of local implementers while holding them accountable to the principles behind these acts.
Brussels should treat Bulgaria not only as a point of vulnerability, but also as a bellwether. While the country currently serves as a backdoor for Kremlin-aligned narratives entering the EU’s media ecosystem, it also offers a blueprint for what information resilience – or its failure – could look like in Western Balkan candidate countries with similar structural deficiencies.
The EU’s current “front runner” Montenegro, for example, recently emerged from its own spell of political paralysis that nearly derailed its accession bid, a crisis only resolved through half-baked media and justice laws.
The EU cannot afford to see the passage of legislation like the EMFA as the finish line. What is needed is a political commitment to enforce the rules that already exist. The real test of the EMFA, and of Europe’s broader information resilience, will be whether it can convert legal architecture into institutional credibility, especially in places where that credibility is most under siege.
The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of BIRN.
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