Bulgaria is now in the final stages of joining the eurozone, the currency union of 20 EU member states. The country‘s ruling coalition said adopting the euro is a top priority that, ideally, will become a reality at the beginning of 2026.
Meanwhile, pro-Russian parties and popular pro-Kremlin actors have been actively — and in some cases aggressively — campaigning against the move.
At the end of February, supporters and members of the pro-Russian party Vazrazhdane (in English: “Revival”) vandalized the European Commission‘s building in Bulgaria‘s capital, Sofia.
With the possibility of Bulgaria entering the eurozone getting closer and closer, disinformation narratives have become more prolific.
DW Fact check and DW Bulgarian looked at some of the viral claims.
Will the European Commission ‘steal’ people’s money?
Claim: Rada Laykova, a European Parliament member from Vazrazhdane, said in a video shared on TikTok that “there will be a deadline by which you need to have spent your money,” after which the European Commission will steal it from people.
DW Fact check: False
The long version of the interview, from the YouTube channel of prominent pro-Russian commentator Martin Karbovski has nearly 80.000 views, and another short version has 1.8 million views on his Facebook page.Laykova’s claims have also been shared multiple times beyond Karbovski‘s official channels.
In the interview, Laykova suggested (21:42-23:16) that people‘s savings and pension funds could be used for military projects.
She added that “it‘s actively being discussed” that the EU will, in a way, confiscate people‘s savings, pension funds and salaries if they don‘t spend them in a limited amount of time.
But people’s savings are protected in the EU. The EU does not have the power to simply seize private savings arbitrarily.
It operates under a legal framework that protects individual property rights, for example, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (article 17), the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (article 345), and the article 1 of protocol No.11 to the European Court of Human Rights.
Moreover, as European Commission spokesperson Olof Gill recently told DW, “EU citizens enjoy and will continue enjoying full freedom to invest based on their personal choices: they will always have total control of where they want to keep and allocate their money.”
So, savings cannot be taken away from EU citizens without solid legal reasons.
And there are regulations in place that can compensate people in case of bank failure, for example. At least savings accounts up to €100,000 ($113,000) per person are protected if a bank goes bankrupt.
Also, there are specific provisions under which authorities can access information about private bank accounts, such as in cases where there are criminal proceedings against the bank account owner.
The narrative that the EU can “steal” people‘s private savings has gathered steam in other countries as well, as DW’s fact-checking team recently explained.
The false statement by Laykova stems from a combination of two recent events in Brussels. Firstly, the EU announced that it‘s going to invest €800 billion in rearmament in the face of Russian threats and changes in US foreign policy.
Separately, the European Commission adopted its strategy for a Savings and Investment Union (SIU)in March. With the SIU, the EU wants to make it easier for citizens to invest through harmonized legislature and common opportunities. But this would involve voluntary participation, not forced expropriation.
The two events are unrelated, but anti-EU figures in Bulgaria would like to make them seem like they are.
A narrative related to the digital euro
For Laykova, there’s an additional element with which she intends to make her claim more believable: the establishment of the digital euro.
She said that the supposed discussions at the European level that would allegedly end up with people’s savings being confiscated are directly connected to the establishment of the digital euro.
The EU has described this project as a digital form of cash that would give people an additional choice about how to pay. The European Central Bank (ECB) has guaranteed that it can be exchanged at face value for euro cash.
But in Bulgaria, there is also a narrative that sees the digital euro as a threat to people’s security and freedom.
And because the ECB announced that the preparation phase for the digital euro should be over by October 2025, Laykova alleged that if Bulgaria joins the Eurozone, it will “automatically join the digital euro” as well.
For her, this would mean a “programming of our money,” as she said in a TikTok video, which has over 90.000 views and thousands more on other platforms.
“This is about control—when, where and for what we can spend our money,” Laykova continued.
Programmable money entails that the digital currency could only be used for buying certain products at a certain place and time—like food vouchers with an expiration date.
This idea contradicts the principle on which the digital euro will be built—the fact that it will at any time be exchangeable for cash.
Will Bulgarians lose most of their savings?
Claim: “If, God save us, we do join the Eurozone, that will be at an exchange rate different from the current fixed one of 1.95583 leva for 1 euro“, claims Kostadin Kostadinov, the leader of pro-Russian party Vazrazhdane.
According to him, this will lead to people losing most of their savings since they will be exchanged at a less profitable rate when Bulgaria switches from its currency, lev, to the euro.
The video has almost 600,000 views on Facebook, and more on other platforms like YouTube and TikTok.
DW Fact check: False
The exchange rate of Bulgarian lev to euro is fixed through a currency board established first in 1997 when the lev’s value was pegged to the German mark and subsequently to the euro, when Germany adopted the common European currency.
The currency board was set up to counter a financial crisis and hyperinflation in the Balkan country in the late 1990s. Under that agreement, the exchange rate between the two currencies is 1.95583 lev for 1 euro.
In October of 2022, the Bulgarian parliament passed a law on its accession to the eurozone.
It states that Bulgaria will only join the common currency under the fixed exchange rate of 1.95583.
A further law was passed in the summer of 2024, which outlines specifics for the transition between the two currencies.
The new law also clearly states that the exchange rate will remain the official one. “The official exchange rate of the lev to the euro is the irrevocably fixed exchange rate of the lev to the euro,” the law reads.
Theoretically, as stated in the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, article 140, current eurozone members are the ones that determine the exchange rate at which a new member is accepted into the common currency.
However, since the parliament in Sofia decided it will only enter the eurozone if the exchange rate remains the same, the exchange rate won’t be a matter of discussion.
There’s already a precedent for this situation in the eurozone.
Before Bulgaria, a couple of other countries joined the euro after their national currency was pegged to the common currency under a currency board.
Estonia was in an identical position. Its kroon was pegged to the German mark in 1992 and when Berlin adopted the euro, the kroon got pegged to the euro. The other Baltic countries — Latvia and Lithuania — also kept their fixed exchange rate when they joined the eurozone.
Why these claims are so popular in Bulgariа
Part of the reason why these claims have gathered steam is the country‘s comparatively low media literacy rate, says Ralitsa Kovacheva, a disinformation researcher and professor of journalism at Sofia University.
Only 31% of people in the Balkan country have at least basic digital skills, which is below the EU average of 54%, according to a Digital Decade Eurobarometer survey from 2023.
“All these things scare people, and this is why they are being exploited,” Kovacheva explains.”On the other hand, this narrative of the digital euro is very strongly promoted by the Kremlin,” she adds.
Disinformation against the eurozone is a key part of the general anti-EU and anti-Western narratives, fuelled by the pro-Russian actors in Bulgarian society.
“Analyses” about the digital currency by Russian propaganda website “Strategic Culture Fund” keep making their way into Bulgarian online media like the website Pogled.info, as research by Bulgarian fact-checking platform Factcheck.bg has shown.
Their texts are often translated and adapted from the “Strategic Culture Foundation‘s” materials. The Foundation, an online journal directed by Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, has been described as one of the pillars of Russian propaganda and disinformation by the US State Department.
The disinformation campaign against the Eurozone is heavily influenced by Russian narratives.
The idea is to sow distrust in Bulgarian society and paint anything connected to Brussels as negative. The common currency is an easy target of these campaigns.
“Any potential attack against the ‘European elites,’ who according to the conspiracy theory, are always trying to control and rob the people, sits well with the anti-EU propaganda,” expert Ralitsa Kovacheva concludes.
Edited by: Ines Eisele
