Messages in the Media - University of Toronto

savvy readers, Dnevnik became an exclusively online news
source. 14
FINDINGS:
Over 400 articles were consulted from the three aforementioned
media sources with broad readership in Bulgaria
using the following keywords to search: "Bulgaria and the
EU", "euro", "Schengen Area". Given the initial volume and
range of articles, a limited search narrowed the results
down to 318 articles relevant to current Bulgaria-EU relations.
From these findings, the following four topics stood
out as the leading issues reported on in 2011.
Bulgaria and Romania's accession to the Schengen area
- As 2011 began, the majority of reporting on the topic of
Schengen discussed Bulgaria and Romania's expectations
for accession according to the schedule set out by the EU,
including articles indicating support for the two countries'
accession to the border free zone. 15 By mid-January
2011, all three newspapers reported on the EU's criticism
which revealed the issues that stood in the way of Bulgaria's
accession to the Schengen area, 16 17 as well as the
reaction of the Bulgarian administration, promising that
the criteria will be met in time for the scheduled accession
in March 2011. 18 19 20 21 22 In addition several articles
also indicated that Bulgaria and Romania demanded that
the EU stick to its promises and 'not change the rules of
the game, halfway through', questioning whether the accession
criteria have been equal for all of its member
29
states.
23 24
- In domestic politics, the issue of the delayed accession to
Schengen was widely linked to a scandal that unfolded in
the end of 2010, dealing with government authorized
special investigative techniques ('CPC' in Bulgarian). 25
The opposition parties openly criticized the majority government’s
use of such methods, claiming that the invasion
of privacy was a strong indicator of the 'police state' that
the GERB administration had created. 26 The issue was al-