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26/09/2026Vigenin: The medical workforce crisis is a threat to healthcare across the whole of Europe
21/09/2026Vigenin in Skopje: Good roads and reliable rail links in the region are not secondary issues
26/09/2026
Vigenin: The left must turn its values into concrete policies
“In order to achieve the big goal, we need to win trust. One thing is the debate of ideas, the other, however, is concrete policy proposals.” This was said by Bulgarian MEP from the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament Kristian Vigenin at the forum “Social Democracy Today: Vision and Policies”, organised by the Institute for Social Integration and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. The project presents a progressive political vision that puts people above the pursuit of profit and sees social and health systems as a key long-term investment in tackling inequality and the demographic crisis.
Vigenin described the analyses presented on equality, social security, healthcare, education, science, industrial policy and the environment as a good basis for identifying the problems. He believes, however, that it is important for the left to take the next step: “On the basis of the ideological foundation and the values we are talking about, we must try to translate them into concrete actions and policies.”
According to the MEP, one of the big questions is to what extent the left can be successful by changing and mitigating the problems of the existing economic model. Vigenin also highlighted the differences between Central and Eastern Europe and Western Europe, which increasingly lead to different political priorities within the European socialist family. In his words, a working group has already been set up to analyse the reasons for the weakening of the left in Central and Eastern Europe and the possibilities for restoring its influence.
Kristian Vigenin placed special emphasis on artificial intelligence, which in his view should not be seen solely as a threat: “If we regulate it properly, artificial intelligence can be one of the ways to achieve some of our left-wing goals, namely – to free people from the hardest labour.” He also pointed to the opportunities that AI, telemedicine and innovation are already creating in healthcare, including for the development of new medicines and therapies.
Vigenin stressed that Bulgaria must make much more active use of European opportunities for science, education and innovation. The country has scientific developments and enterprising people, but it still lacks the environment that would allow good ideas to grow into real business, competitive European business.
“We are currently outside parliament, but we are not outside politics. We need to present and propose our concrete ideas more often: what comes next tomorrow and how it should be done,” Vigenin urged. In his view, the left must combine its clear ideological direction with short- and medium-term solutions through which it shows in practice what it offers people.
“Social democrats put the emphasis more on policy, socialists on the ultimate goal. In fact, both are important, because you need to know where you want to get to in order to answer the question of how,” the MEP concluded.
