On Tuesday Meglena Plugchieva was nominated for Bulgaria's Deputy Prime Minister who will be in charge of monitoring and coordinating the EU funding in the last year of the three-way coalition government of PM Sergey Stanishev.

Meglena Plugchieva was born on February 12, 1956, in the Black Sea town of Balchik. She graduated from the German Language High School in the city of Varna, and from the Forestry University in Sofia, majoring in forestry management and environmental studies. In 1989 Plugchieva received a Ph. D. defending a thesis on "Forest Ecology".

In 1981-1984 she worked as an inspector at the Regional Environmental Protection Directorate in Varna. In 1984-1990 she was a Deputy Director of the Varna Regional Forestry Directorate. Between 1990 and 1995 Plugchieva headed the foreign relations department of the National Forestry Directorate.

Between 1995 and 2001 she was a Member of Parliament from the Bulgarian Socialist Party. In 2001-2004 Plugchieva was the Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Forests in the government of Bulgaria's former tsar Simeon Saxe-Coburg, and resigned as a member of the Supreme Council of the Bulgarian Socialist Party because of taking this position.

Since November 2004 Plugchieva has been Bulgaria's Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany. Since 1997 she had also been Bulgaria's representative at the Rheinland-Pfalz province in western Germany. Since 1996 she has been a member of the governing board of the Bulgarian-German Forum.

Plugchieva is fluent in German, Russia, and English. She is married and has two children.

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