Plans of Bulgaria's new Foreign Minister to reinstate communist-era State Security agents have shocked EU officials.

Upon assuming the post of Foreign Minister on Wednesday, former Socialist MEP Kristian Vigenin commented that many of the country's diplomats, exposed as agents of the  communist-era  State Security, DS, had suffered humiliation due to the undignified acts of the previous government of the center-right Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria party, GERB.

Colleagues of the former socialist MEP, as cited by the Focus news agency, remind him, that the civilized world "pays respects and tribute to the victims of the totalitarian regimes, not to the officers of the secret police who participated in these repressions directly or indirectly."

"The efforts to reinstate diplomats, agents of the former State Security are not a good signal for Bulgaria," German EPP MEPs Michael Galer and Elmar Brok say in a statement.

"To our great disappointment we learned that our former colleague, Kristian Vigenin - a representative of the young generation of Bulgarian politicians whom we worked with at the European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs - immediately after his appointment as Bulgaria's new Foreign Minister declared that the reinstatement of former collaborators or full-time employees of the former State Security, who had until recently held senior positions at Bulgaria's diplomatic service, would be a main priority," the MEPS state, condemning as "totally inappropriate" Vigenin's claims that these people had endured repressions and humiliation and their potential was not to be wasted.

"In 2000, the Bulgarian Parliament adopted a Law on Declaring the Criminal Nature of the Communist Regime in Bulgaria.Over the past four years, Bulgaria made some important steps towards  understanding its communist past, including by granting all citizens access to the archives of the repressive institutions of the communist power and by subscribing to the initiative to mark August 23 as the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism and other totalitarian regimes. We believe these accomplishments should not be questioned, but should be preserved, encouraged and deepened with a view to overcoming the traumas of totalitarianism," the MEPs conclude.

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