Bulgaria will be the first country in the history of the Eurozone to join it and then, just months later, get hit with sanctions from Brussels over an excessive budget deficit. A 3.5 percent deficit in 2025, while the permitted maximum is three. The forecast for the coming years looks even worse: 4.1 percent in 2026 and 4.3 percent in 2027.

Prime Minister Rumen Radev, a leftist who came to power in May after the left-populist Progressive Bulgaria won, blamed the previous centre-right government. "They lied to get Bulgaria into the eurozone," he said on returning from Brussels. That is undoubtedly a political punch - but also a real one. The old government, under the eurozone entry conditions, used one-off flexibility for defence spending to bring the official deficit down. Once that flexibility lapsed, the reality of the budget became visible.

Former Finance Minister Temenuzhka Petkova (GERB) rejected the accusations. According to her, Bulgaria was under the 3 percent limit in 2025 thanks to the defence flexibility, and the worsening came due to decisions by caretaker administrations and the delayed budget planning for 2026. Which version is true - the European Commission will decide. But the question everyone is quietly thinking is: should Bulgaria have been let into the eurozone at all before it had finished with the fiscal games?

The context is broader than Bulgaria. Ten other member states are already under the excessive deficit procedure, including Italy and France. Malta, which last year cut its deficit to 2.2 percent, is on the way out of the procedure. In other words, entry into the eurozone has long since stopped being a guarantee of fiscal discipline. It means political access to euro money. Discipline is the thing that comes later - or not.

For the Balkan countries that view the eurozone as the destination (Croatia is already there, Macedonia as a candidate), the Bulgarian case is an important lesson. Entry is not the end - it is the start of a new phase of oversight. And if the economy is not ready for it, the consequences - sanctions, restrictions, supervision - come fast. Bulgaria is now going to break this ice. Skopje should watch closely.