As a Bulgarian national, I am familiar with all habitats listed in a well-documented petition reporting sixteen cases of Natura 2000 ‘vandalism’ in Bulgaria. In a recent article, I briefly described some of the cases. Terrible destruction has already taken place before our eyes and in a very short time-span. No lessons have been learned from Spain for instance, where the beautiful seaside surrendered to the triumph of concrete.

I personally thought that the destruction will stop after our EU accession, but I was wrong. In fact, things are getting worse, as the economic crisis further motivates greedy ‘investors’.

The EU could greatly improve its image and its credibility if it woulds act with more resolution against the destruction of Europe’s nature. But apparently powerful industry interests prevent the EU executive from decisive action. Wild capitalism rules not only in poor countries such as Bulgaria.

The Roma expulsions from France are stirring controversy. It is difficult not to take sides. What I dislike most in the whole story, is hypocrisy. Sarkozy has a low rating and is obviously trying to please his core right-wing electorate. As the presidential elections will get closer, he will find other subjects, to appear as a centrist.

Sarkozy would not be able to achieve much with those expulsions and he knows it. With the 300 euros the Roma get from the French authorities upon leaving France, they could buy their next ticket back, and most of them certainly will.

French officials are calling for the integration of Roma in their places of origin. But Roma are generally nomads, and to my knowledge France has not tried to integrate “les gens du voyage” to communities in France.

I think Roma need our help to fight for their rights, which are also our rights, as we are all citizens of Europe. Their stigmatisation as criminals is a very bad precedent, and they should not feel abandoned. This is why I say: I am a Roma, as JFK said Ich bin ein Berliner.

Recently, I had to answer this question and many others, such as is Islam the main obstacle for Turkey’s EU bid, in front of a Turkish audience in this beautiful country. Happily enough, I am a journalist, so I don’t need to be diplomatic.

I started by saying that my country Bulgaria had the same hesitations about the real intentions of the EU a few years ago. Bulgarians and Romanians are predominantly Orthodox Christians, and we had an impression the some countries in the EU draw a barrier where the (Catholic) border of the Austro-Hungarian empire used to be, leaving out Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania. This impression proved to be wrong.

As to the EU being more and more demanding with every new enlargement, my country experienced that as well, as it was forced to close four nuclear reactors, of a type that is still exploited in Finland.

Regarding Turkey, the Cyprus problem appears to be a major stumbling block (I could compare it to our nuclear reactors). Besides, it would not be realistic to imagine Turkey joining a Union of which it does not recognise one of the members. But if Turkey helps the divided island to reunify, then it would be easier to answer if yes or no, some countries are just looking for an excuse to keep Turkey out.

As the Turkish audience considered that the Union had been very forthcoming with Bulgaria and Romania, I said that those two countries were so weak, that without EU membership they would have been bankrupt by now. The decision to take on board Bulgaria and Romania before they were ready to join however was a political gesture and an exception which I don’t expect will be repeated anytime soon.

As to Turkey, instead of its politicians and population constantly being focused on the EU accession pace, the  best advise I could offer was that all efforts should instead be concentrated of making the economy and the society strong and successful, to the benefit of the citizens. A successful Turkey would not beg to join, it would be be kindly asked to integrate the Union.

I was also asked what should Turkey do to change the prevailing negative attitude of public opinion in the EU as a whole regarding its accession. I said: make sure more tourists from the EU visit Turkey. I am sure that a survey among those who have seen the country with their very eyes would be overwhelmingly positive.

Some commentators were quick to say, after the first days of the vuvuzela championship, that European football was down. Now we see that no matter who wins today, when Germany plays against Spain, we will have a all-European final, as the other finalist is the Netherlands.

This is even more remarkable, knowing that never in history has a European team won the world cup, whenever the championship took place outside European soil.

I’m sorry for the Africans, especially for the team of Ghana, and even more for the Latin Americans (I’m a fan of Lionel Messi, who was not great this time, and of Diego Forlan, who was brilliant). I’m also a bit sorry for emerging football powers like South Korea, Japan and the US, who played much better that one could have expected.  But they all have to acknowledge that Europe still proves to play best the game England invented.

Eastern Europe indeed did not make it very far. The Slovakia team was a small sensation and Slovenia played decently well. But what would be Germany’s Mannschaft without Lukas Podolski, Miroslav Klose and Piotr Trochowski with their Polish background and Mesut Özil with his Turkish origin? I saw with my very eyes ethnic Turks waiving Germany’s flag. Maybe we will see more of them in the next days.

I personally prefer ‘In bed with Madona’, but I chose this title for two reasons. One is that we published this morning a story about the Commission’s plan to embed journalists with Barroso. And there is a second reason. According to the leaked letter, the Commission will scan the blogosphere and the social websites with a series of key words apparently starting with ‘Barroso’.

Therefore I’m almost certain that a printed version of my blogpost will be on the top of Barroso’s desk when he will have his next coffee. That’s what I call modern communication methods!

We heard several good news concerning enlargement. The Union is to open membership talks with Iceland, it agreed to open the last and most contentious chapters in Croatia’s accession talks, and it unblocked Serbia’s Stabilisation and Association agreement, at last.

The EU also made gestures with regard of two of its less advanced hopefuls, as it is preparing to lift lift the visa barrier for citizens of Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Macedonia has still to find a solution to its ‘name dispute’ with Greece, and Kosovo is awaiting the decision of the International Court of Justice with regard to its status. In the meantime, Turkey appears to be preparing for a visit of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, seen as a ‘make or break’ milestone.

But as a whole, enlargement appears to stand higher in the EU agenda than it had been over the last couple of years of the Barroso I commission. As I see it, the event that greatly favoured this auspicious atmosphere was the Slovenian referendum on the border dispute with Croatia.

The referendum was narrowly won by 51.5% of the Slovenes who voted. The gloomy mood about Europe’s greatest project ever was changed completely by a handful of people…

Slovaks will vote on 12 June. The prime minister Robert Fico is expected to win, although he might find it difficult to form a coalition.

But my point is that those elections are being influenced by developments in heighbouring Hungary, where the Fidesz party feels so strong, that it has adopted on 26 May a Citizenship Act making it very easy for ethnic Hungarians living abroad to obtain Hungarian citizenship.

Hungarian politicians ever spoke of “peaceful change of borders”, “building the New Central Europe”, “universal Magyarhood” and a Hungarian state of 15 million people, whereas the country has in fact 10 million.

Without any doubt, nationalists in Slovakia would find inspiration in those provocative statements and in the perceived threat for their country. Present-day Slovakia has been under the Austro-Hungarian empire and it’s not by chance that Czech artist David Cerny represented Slovakia in his controversial “Entropa” work as a Hungarian sausage.

Also, reportedly, as Slovakia suffers from unprecedented floods, the Hungarian parliament voted to send substantial aid to foreign countries, specifying that it should reach ethnic Hungarians. Offices are reportedly being set-up for distributing that aid. But Slovaks fear that in the longer run, those offices will recruit prospective new Hungarian nationals, with a strategy of building an electoral contingent for Fidesz for several parliamentary mandates ahead.

But the funny thing, if I may say so, is that the EU has no instrument whatsoever to react or take position.

Despite their special interest in areas like energy security or neighbourhood policy, the East European countries that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007 have not yet become agenda-setters in Brussels, a study by the Comenius university in Slovakia reveals.

One of the reasons, the authors of the report explained, that the EU newcomers still struggle to define their national priorities and preferences. This apparently is due to poor domestic coordination, to insufficient administrative capacity, to inability to build alliances, not only among other East European members, but with the Western countries and the Commission.

Also, the Visegrad format has proved to be of little value for identifying  new political projects. As Piotr Kaczyński, a researcher at the Centre for European Policy Studies said, if a political idea doesn’t “fly” in the Visegrad format, “it is obvious that it could not fly in an EU format either”.

My own impressions from following EU affairs go in the same direction. I also think East Europeans were used to get the agenda from “higher up”, that is, from Moscow, and now they expect the same from Brussels.

This is why I find it strange that in spite of the fact that East Europeans do not appear enthusiastic over some of the the Europe 2020 strategy targets, they would accept it, as a Gosplan. Accept it, and then cheat on it.

I hope I’m wrong.

The Greek crisis brought ‘village politics’ to the EU, as Finnish foreign minister Alexander Stubb recently said. He also spoke of “an internal crisis of the Western world”.

Bad example is contagious. German Chancellor Angela Merkel staunchly resisted calls from other countries to promise help for heavily-indebted Greece. Ironically, this did not prevent her from losing the elections in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Then we saw a flurry of politicians, especially in countries where national elections are to be held, playing with the citizens’ fears. In this cacophony, markets stopped reacting to the leaders’ declarations and the euro plunged. This prompted some to consider the end of the EU monetary union, of future enlargement or of the Union itself.

What would have happened if instead, Merkel had been inspired by JFK, and said something like “we are all Greeks”? But political courage is rare nowadays. And there is another problem: in the cynical world we live in, politicians do not believe that citizens would understand messages of courage and solidarity.

I think their assumption is wrong, but we will all have to pay a heavy price for this mistake.

Professor Kalypso Nicolaidis of the ‘Future of Europe’ reflection group speaks about holding a few hundred of ‘agora’, the ancient Greece type of open debates, across Europe in the same week, “free of officialdom” as she insisted.

Probably those debates should be thematic, we discussed the Western Balkans accession as a possible subject.

I suggested something different - a Woodstock of Europeanism, that is, a big thematic annual gathering instead of many smaller. With countries competing to host the event, like they do for the Olympic games. And with broad subjects such as the European identity.

Other opinions are welcome.