"The draft plan of Bulgaria’s national security strategy will be ready by the end of May 2010, general Roumen Milanov, secretary of the Security Council at the Council of Ministers told a February 22 2010 round table on national security issues in Sofia.
Once completed, the document will be put to a wide public discussion, Milanov was quoted by Bulgarian-language Dnevnik daily as saying.
The idea is for Bulgaria to have its own national security strategy ready by autumn of 2010 when Nato is expected to come forward with its own security strategy.
That way, if some serious differences exist between the two documents, the Bulgarian one could be updated.
According to Milanov, the national strategy would not concentrate solely on matters of internal security and defence, but would also embrace energy issues and the economy.
The document had to be no more than 15 pages because it was just a framework paper, Milanov also said.
Prime Minister Boiko Borissov ordered work on the strategy to begin at the end of 2009 but its start was delayed because every sector had to present its own security strategy for incorporation in the final document. One such strategy – to cite but one instance – was a view on what energy Bulgaria planned to develop, one based on nuclear or water energy, for example.
The document will not be obligatory. The previous government had also worked on such a strategy in 2008 but it had never adopted it, Milanov said, and noted that parts of it were used in the work of the new national security strategy.
As Dnevnik recalls, a concept for national security was adopted in 1998 by the then government of Ivan Kostov that prioritised Bulgaria’s accession to the European Union and Nato.
After Bulgaria joined Nato in 2004, and the EU in 2007, these goals were fulfilled."