Bulgaria mummers parade.jpg

The Bulgars, a Central Asian Turkic tribe, merged with the local Slavic inhabitants in the late 7th century to form the first Bulgarian state. In succeeding centuries, Bulgaria struggled with the Byzantine Empire to assert its place in the Balkans, but by the end of the 14th century the country was overrun by the Ottoman Turks.

Northern Bulgaria attained autonomy in 1878 and all of Bulgaria became independent from the Ottoman Empire in 1908. Having fought on the losing side in both World Wars, Bulgaria fell within the Soviet sphere of influence and became a People's Republic in 1946.

Communist domination ended in 1990, when Bulgaria held its first multiparty election since World War II and began the contentious process of moving toward political democracy and a market economy while combating inflation, unemployment, corruption, and crime. The country joined NATO in 2004 and the EU in 2007.

In national elections, held July 5, the center-right GERB party won by a landslide. Its leader Boiko Borisov is expected to head a new government by the end of the month. 

He called on the outgoing Socialist led government on Friday to halt talks on major energy projects such as the South Stream gas pipeline until his new cabinet takes over.

"We are receiving worrying signals for acts in state-owned companies, which are not taking into account the financial and economic crisis and the interests of the country as a whole," he wrote in a letter to Economy and Energy Minister Petar Dimitrov.