Ex-king throws crown into ring for top EU job

SOFIA LETTER:IN A region that executed or expelled its previous generation of monarchs, and where prime ministers are still occasionally assassinated, the one man who has been both moves among his people with remarkable ease.

Dozens of Bulgarians wander in off the Sofia streets to stare at Simeon Saxe-Coburg in a packed and sweaty corner of the state archives, and a few brave ones approach and say hello, then retreat to drink a warm glass of complimentary wine and try the canapes.

There is no security cordon around Saxe-Coburg, former king and ex-premier of Bulgaria, as he surveys an exhibition about Irish-born Balkan correspondent James Bourchier with a calm that belies Sofia's reputation as the EU's contract-killing capital.

Saxe-Coburg talks quietly to his people in Bulgarian that has been heavily polished since his return home in 1996, 50 years after he was exiled as a nine-year-old boy-king, by communists who executed his regents and abolished the country's monarchy.

Five years after that first trip back to Bulgaria, Saxe-Coburg became prime minister at the head of a party bearing his name.

Now, out of power again and 70 years old, rumours are swirling in Sofia that he may wish to round off a unique public life as the first president of the EU, if the Lisbon Treaty creating the post is approved by all member states.

"I have a truly European family background, many friends in high places and have always sought dialogue, tolerance and open-mindedness," Saxe-Coburg told The Irish Times.

"It would also be a tremendous gesture to the (ex-communist) countries that joined the EU since 2004, to have a man from their part of the world in that position. It would be silly to say it doesn't interest me, but there are many other fine potential candidates for the job - including Bertie Ahern."

Tall, slim and immaculately dressed, Saxe-Coburg has what is commonly called aristocratic bearing.

But in conversation he is frank, good-humoured and talkative in the English he speaks fluently along with French, Spanish, Italian and German, the result of exile in Rome and then Madrid, education at a French lycée and a US military academy, and a career as a business executive which took him around Europe and the world.

"To be honest, I feel old, because I started carrying responsibility so young, when my father died when I was aged six," he said, admitting that his memory had been stirred by the exhibition on Bourchier, who was a confidant of his grandfather, Tsar Ferdinand, while covering the turbulent Balkans for the Times of London around the turn of the 20th century.

"I was four years old when my father took me to his grave and gave me an early talk on life and politics," said Saxe-Coburg, recalling the visit to Bourchier's burial place in the spectacular Rila mountains, beside the hallowed monastery of the same name.

"Fifty-four years later I went back to the grave and meditated on the extraordinary things that life can bring, and on what brought Bourchier to Bulgaria. I can only think it was a certain shared spirit of liberty and freedom." Bourchier mixed journalism with semi-official diplomacy on Bulgaria's behalf, and his advocacy of the country's cause won him considerable public affection: people reportedly lined the streets of Sofia to watch his funeral cortege pass, and a road in the city centre still bears his name.

His support for the Balkan state has particular resonance now, when Bulgaria is taking a diplomatic battering from many EU partners for failing to fight rampant graft and crush mafia groups, whose turf wars have claimed more than 150 high-profile victims this decade, but for which no one has been convicted.

An EU report due this summer is expected to lambast the coalition government - of which Saxe-Coburg's party is a member - for its impotence on crime and corruption, and may lead to crucial funding being withheld from Sofia.

"It would be unfair to hold back the aid," argued Saxe-Coburg.

"There is now a real will and intention of the government to make sure things improve, so we are no longer pointed out as the 'bad pupils' of the EU."

Under pressure from Brussels, several government ministers and senior police investigators have recently been forced out of office by corruption allegations. But even Saxe-Coburg, an ardent defender of his country's reputation, admits there is much work still to do.

"Brussels is helping us by pushing us in the right direction, and we should take it in the right spirit and not feel like we are being bossed around," said the western-educated aristocrat who plunged into the morass of Balkan politics.

"After all, they are not pleasant, these constant insinuations of financial hanky-panky."