Bulgaria joins euro area from 1 January

Welcome friends ! It's been a pleasure visiting you as (distant) neighbors and it's even better to have you as partners. That's one great piece of news to start the year on a good note !

I'm seeing some negative sentiment here, that I feel like, needs to be cleared up. For some context, I'm 29, I haven't always lived here, but have been here for almost 20 years. I work in the software industry.

1. Bulgaria has been a member state since January 1st 2007. Many here feel like us being accepted into Schengen area took longer it should despite the clear benefits of our black sea ports.

2. The adoption of the Euro was a long planned thing, delayed to ensure the country can have a smooth transition, while there's a Russo-phile movement in the country, there was never a majority negative sentiment, it's believed to be Russian disinformation that made it look like that.

3. Bulgaria is not purely a leech in the EU, while it's a beneficiary of financial aid from various EU initiatives, that's offset heavily by the constant source cheap, highly skilled labor and education. Some common examples are/were Nurses and Doctors often go west to fill gaps in other member state, notably in UK before Brexit. Construction laborers working in Germany. And an incredible amount of software engineering being outsourced to here from all over the world, especially richer members states.

4. Bulgaria has a huge Queer community, and while it's true, the current government leaned more conservative in the bad sense, we did also protest them out of government. While the country is dealing with and healing from decades of past Russian influence, the youth are organizing Queer Bazaars and Palestinian Solidarity Charity Punk concerts, both, I can attest were very nice.

My advice is to not form your opinions purely by what news sources that reach you, because in the modern world, everyone has an agenda. Before talking about a country you have no personal, long term experience with, try to do basic research using the "country + keywords" query and dig deep. The news that seem to reach people these days seem to constantly confirm their biases, and having seen the comparison to Hungary, a country under possible dictatorship, vs. Bulgaria, a country that just protested it's Parliament out, feels very odd.

69%~ of Bulgarians disagree with gay marriage. Only 17%~ think gay marriage should be allowed in Europe in general.

In 2024 they passed your typical "gay propaganda" bill meaning that issues related to or affecting gay people cannot be discussed, even sexual health etc.

As a gay dude who never got being gay mentioned, or requisite sexual health advice when I was in school (in NZ) and took several hard years of not understanding what was wrong when I was trying to force myself to be hetero:

I don't think they deserve this. They don't deserve the financial boons and convenience of the Euro area. But then others will disagree of course; we're tribal - the gays are my tribe and might not be yours, but the difference between you and me I suppose is that I'd complain if they were known to have laws or persecute any particular group, not just my own tribes.

Congratulations Bulgaria! Maybe this time next year, the UK!

This doesn't make sense. We're admitting another Hungary in our club, and this is not going to end well. Any progressive vote is going to be blocked by those countries, and we're going to be paying money to them to vote our way as we are doing now with Hungary.

Did they agree? I've read at least one news article in the past 2 years talking about a referendum.