Ivan Kostov

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Ivan Yordanov Kostov (Иван Йорданов Костов)
46th Prime Minister of the Republic of Bulgaria
In office 21 May 1997 – 24 July 2001
Preceded by	Stefan Sofiyanski
Succeeded by	Simeon Sakskoburggotski
Born	23 December 1949 Sofia, Bulgaria
Political party	UDF , now DSB
Spouse	married Elena Kostova

Ivan Yordanov Kostov (Bulgarian: Иван Йорданов Костов) (born December 23, 1949 in Sofia) was Prime Minister of Bulgaria from May 1997 to July 2001 and leader of the Union of Democratic Forces between December 1994 and July 2001.

Ivan Kostov graduated in Economics from the University of National and World Economy in Sofia in 1974, and later earned a Ph.D. in Mathematical Modeling of Economic Processes from the University of Sofia. He had worked as associate professor in Sofia Technical University, and only entered politics after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the Bulgarian communist dictator, Todor Zhivkov. Kostov became an economic expert for the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF), the newly created major anticommunist party, in 1990. His political career began as Member of Parliament in the 7th Grand National Assembly in 1990 (he has been re-elected to Parliament ever since) and he went on to become Bulgaria's Finance Minister in the two consecutive governments of Dimitar Popov (December 1990 - October 1991) and Filip Dimitrov (November 1991 - December 1992).

Kostov was elected chairman of the UDF in 1994 and, after winning the May 1997 elections, became Bulgaria's Prime Minister, his cabinet being the first Bulgarian post-communist government to serve its full 4-year term, despite having to carry with painful economic reforms. He is often credited for turning around his country's fortunes and establishing a path towards Bulgaria's complete integration with the West. Under his government, long-delayed economic reforms were carried out, privatization of state-owned enterprises was carried on a large scale (this privatization was widely alleged to have been carried out in an incompetent way and harmful to the country's future financial situation) and the country started long-sought accession talks with the European Union (set for membership as of January 1, 2007).

However, reformist policies led to increased unemployment, which combined with serious and widespread allegations of corruption in his cabinet and people close to him resulted in a June 2001 election loss to the National Movement for Simeon II (NMSII). Kostov resigned as chair of the UDF and eventually left the party to establish, in 2003, his own political force, the Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria (DSB).

Ivan Kostov, though a highly talented politician, has been inflexible in his political views which has prevented the creation of a strong alliance with the moderate right-wingers of the United Democratic Forces, now lead by the former President of the Republic, Petar Stoyanov. Above all (and rightly so, in hind sight), he has critisized heavily the former Tsar's son, Simeon Saxe-Coburg Gotha (a.k.a. Simeon), and the so-called "Tsar's Party" NMSII, which defeated UDF and Kostov in the 2001 elections and lost, in its turn, the next elections in 2005. He has actively networked with European politicians of the centre-right European People's Party, and has always kept to his uncompromising views of the Bulgarian political scene. His well-founded critisizm of the former Tsar's son, Simeon, his successor in the office of Prime Minister, as well as of the present (2006) President, Georgi Parvanov (who was shown to have worked with the former Communist secret service) and a number of other political figures, such as the populist Mayor of Sofia, Boyko Borisov (a former body guard of the former Bulgarian communist dictator, Todor Zhivkov), while on the whole objective, has had negative effect on the efforts of all Right and Centre Right forces to forge a winning common policy. For example, it was Kostov who proposed the President of the Constitutional Court, Nedelcho Beronov, a former UDF parliamentarian, as the common democratic challenger against the former communist Parvanov in the 2006 Bulgarian Presidential elections. In the event, Beronov failed to make the second round of the Presidential elections, letting Parvanov meet and easily defeat the leather-jacket wearing candidate of the extreme nationalists, Volen Siderov. As a result, Kostov's uncompromising position has ultimately diminished his own influence as a mainstream politician in Bulgaria.

However, as unfortunate as it is, Kostov was proven quite right about the lack of competence of Simeon as prime minister, whose major "accomplishment" was the return of land and property (some of which was used but did not really belong) to the former Tsar's family. Simeon, as it turned out during his time as a prime minister (2001-5), instead of a "messiah", became a grave disappointment and did not come in statesmanship even close to his father, the late Tsar Boris III, who is considered by all (except, of course, the former communists) as the shrewdest Bulgarian politician in the first half of the 20th Century. (N.B. Boriss III was instrumental, together with the Bulgarian Christian Orthodox Church, in the saving of some fifty thousand Bulgarian Jews from the concentration camps of The Third Reich, despite the fact that Bulgaria was an ally of Nazi Germany at the time. Moreover, Boriss III did not allow the Bulgarian Army to get involved in WWII on the Nazi Germany side, for which, as many believe, he paid with his life in 1943.)

Kostov is a vociferous political figure, but recently his influence has been limited to those, who after abandoning the weakened UDF, grouped under his leadership and that of his close associates, Veselin Metodiev and Ekaterina Mikhailova. However, Kostov has not had his last word yet on the never easy Bulgarian political scene.

Preceded by Stefan Sofiyanski

Prime Minister of Bulgaria May 21, 1997 - July 24, 2001

Succeeded by Simeon Sakskoburggotski