Two days before the beginning of the school year for the students in Bulgaria, the training cycle for Class 2023 of the Bulgarian School of Politics ended. Hotel “Lion” in Borovets gathered the forty participants of the National Program 2023 for the last, fourth, course.
The training was opened by H.E. Alejandro Polanco, Ambassador of the Kingdom of Spain to Bulgaria. The diplomat spoke to the trainees about Spain’s main priorities after taking over the rotating presidency of the EU on July 1, 2023, and challenges to their implementation. MEPs Dr. Andrey Kovachev and Tsvetelina Penkova also spoke about the main priorities in their work. They were speakers right after Ambassador Polanco and touched on the topics of geopolitical challenges to the EU and its enlargement, energy, innovation and start-ups.
A special guest for this course was the diplomat Miroslav Zafirov, who had participated in the peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine.
Genesis and development of ethno-religious processes in the Western Balkans was the first topic for the second academic day, which was presented by Dr. Kaloyan Tsvetkov, a lecturer at Sofia University. After that, the trainees, divided into groups, worked on a task in which they had to determine the risks of a new severe conflict in the Western Balkans and, accordingly, propose measures for its prevention.
The Director of the State Cultural Institute under the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Snezhana Joveva, spoke about culture as a strong blade of diplomacy. What are the challenges in the relations between North Macedonia and Bulgaria, the participants in the National Program learned personally from HE. Agneza Rusi Popovska, Ambassador of the Republic of North Macedonia to Bulgaria.
By the end of the fourth course and their studies, the representatives of Class 2023 also had a panel on crisis communication, which was led by Assoc. Prof. Alexander Hristov, on artificial intelligence and policies with the participation of Webit founder Dr. Plamen Rusev and on institutions in the EU, led by Prof. Ingrid Shikova.
The end of the training was marked by a common commemorative photo and a discussion of the implementation of the charity initiative that this graduating class also decided to have.