Prof. Irena Ilieva, PhD, Acting Director of the ISL-BAS, and Prof. Stefka Naumova, PhD, were guests on Kod 11-13

Prof. Irena Ilieva, PhD, Acting Director of the Institute for the State and the Law at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and Prof. Stefka Naumova, PhD, of the same institute, were guests on Code 11-13 to discuss whether the rights of Bulgarians in the United Kingdom will be protected after Brexit. Beforehand, they also gave their views on the current topic of the BAS and the additional funds it received from the state yesterday.

This is what Prof. Irena Ilieva said: "Our demands are just, and we expected them to be met in full. The pay of scholars at the Academy is currently humiliating. Assistant Professors at the Institute for the State and the Law receive the minimum wage, and had even fallen below it. I was forced to raise it to that level using internal funds. I can predict how the Academy will continue its actions, but we have an extremely strong General Assembly, which will decide whether we go on. I repeat: these 15 million are extremely insufficient. They would not bring us close to pay that would put us on a par with teachers."

Professor Naumova commented on how Europe will change after Brexit: "I sincerely hope that things will get better. I would like to go back to the time before the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom. There were shuttle visits by the then Prime Minister, linked to one slogan: that within the EU the Member States of the Union should grow ever closer. The rhetorical question was then raised whether this applied to the old Member States of the European Union."

More of the conversation in the video, and everything from CODE 11-13 – HERE