In the evening, at our regular restaurant near the main square, we get into conversation with a family – the mother is Bulgarian, from here, the father German.
They are back on holiday and talk about the difficulties their relatives have here, especially the older ones, about school and university education, about emigration. And about EVN. They mention increasing electricity prices and the court cases concerning the Roma in which the entire (mainly) Roma area of Stolipinovo in Plovdiv was cut off from the supply because of unpaid bills. I’ve been web-researching the parameters of the problem. The issue at stake has an independent history related to the economic and social position of the Roma and also has a history of how they have been dealt with ‘by the authorities’. For example, in 2002, before EVN acquired the network, the government attempted to force payment of well over 2 million euros of arrears from people in the area by cutting off their supply.

The problem concerns the water supply too. Clearly collective ‘punishment’ is not an acceptable method. The matter is further complicated, though, by being open to allegations of ostensible racism on the one hand and, by deliberately editing the history, the complexities of the  situation provide nationalists with leverage that was not available when the supplier was a state-owned Bulgarian company. On the other hand one can sympathise with those who live in the area, pay their bills and are nevertheless cut off. One of the complication relates to who can have an electric meter installed. The law allows contracts to be made only with the owner of the property. Since many Roma live on land that is not legally theirs or has not been registered as such, present legislation makes it theoretically impossible for them to apply for a supply to be connected even if they are willing and, given that the unemployment rate amongst the Roma is around four times higher that that of the national average, in the position of being able to pay for it.