Video Transcription_

First of all, I want to ask the GenFree, meaning Generation of Freedom, to tell me – do you remember when was the last album of ABBA published? Do you remember it? No.

Also, Generation of Freedom – do you remember, when did the legendary Congress of the Solidarity Trade Union take place at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk?

Both of them happened exactly 40 years ago, in 1981. At that time, we were living in a communist country, in a communist reality and we were not allowed to travel.

I personally was not allowed to go to the concert of ABBA, but I was allowed to visit another communist country like Poland, and I used this opportunity to visit the Solidarity Trade Union Congress in Gdańsk, on the 3rd of October 1981.

That’s why I said this is not just another conference for me, this is a very special conference for me, because at this moment I mark 40 years of my public, political life, so thank you for inviting me here today.

That was me at that time. The long hair was a symbol that we already had something.

In Gdańsk I realised what was behind the importance of Poland, and I’m thankful to your prime minister for mentioning the word “Solidarity”.

Poland is a very significant country, and then, at that moment I realised why the Warsaw Pact was signed in Warsaw, it was because of the significance of your country.

Very solid confirmation that it will continue to be like that, I received 15 years later in the United States, when I left the house of Senator John McCain, with Lady Margaret Thatcher and she told me:

– Young man – at that time I was supposedly young, – Young man, you have to forget about Bulgaria’s membership in NATO. – Why Lady Thatcher? What did we do wrong?

She told me: – You didn’t do anything wrong, but we must first invite Poland to NATO, because we sacrificed Poland to Hitler and now, we owe Poland a lot.

And I understood that the significance of Poland will continue to be as topical as it was a decade before.

DC:

It’s important to add that Mr Solomon Passy was the father of the idea for Bulgaria to NATO, he was the first politician in Bulgaria who openly said that Bulgaria should one day become a member of NATO.

This was crazy at that time.

But successful!

We believed that we were moving very slowly towards NATO and the European Union. Why slowly? Because we believed we were driving slow cars, but nevertheless we had skilful navigators.

Navigators like King Simeon the II of Bulgaria, who was a Bulgarian Prime Minister negotiating the membership of NATO and European Union or Manfred Wörner, the secretary general of NATO, or Lech Wałęsa who visited me 16 years after I was in Gdańsk, now he was in a different setting?

And today we have our symbols in NATO – we have the Solidarity symbol in NATO, we have our Trabant in NATO, but this is not the end of the history.

Membership in NATO and the European Union is not the end of history. This is the beginning of a new history, and this is a beginning of new integration.

And you’ll ask me “what integration, what is next?” The next is the Three Seas Initiative. Why the Three Seas? Because Three Seas, or as I prefer to call the Three Seas countries “New Europe”, it is more user-friendly.

New Europe has potential. What is the potential there?

We have a combined population of 112 million people. This is equal to France and Spain taken together. We have a combined territory of 1.2 million square kilometres, this is Germany plus France plus Belgium together and we have an average salary which is 2 times lower than in the rest of Europe, which is a great potential, but in politics… to find a solution is nothing.

To implement the solution is everything. The question is how to implement the solution called the New Europe or the Three Seas Initiative? How, how to do it?

My original profession is mathematics – when I don’t know how to do something, I go back to mathematics. In mathematics there is one very important principle: if you don’t know how to solve a problem, first solve a bigger problem, then the smaller problem can be solved as a consequence

And what was our Bulgarian solution in order to sell the Three Seas? We first decided to sell a bigger concept, which we call Three Oceans.

We established a Bulgarian base in Antarctica, in between the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean and the Antarctic Ocean. And I visited Antarctica 4 times, it is a fantastic place to visit.

I invite all of you to Bulgarian base. I also visited the Polish base there. So once you solve the Three Oceans problem, to solve the Three Seas problem is nothing. We go ahead. This, by the way, was one of the reasons why the Three Seas Summit in Bulgaria was so successful a few months ago.

We succeeded and thanks to all of you who supported this idea, to prioritize connectivity in the Three Seas Area for STEM projects. President Radev of Bulgaria extends his warm salutes to everybody who attended this event in Sofia and supported this initiative.

Let’s start to apply this Three Oceans concept to our tasks in the Three Seas. What can we do?

We have the Three Seas and we have… as you know very well, we have the North Sea route, which starts from Korea, goes up north around Russia and leads here to the Baltic Sea. The North Sea Route is heavily dominated by Russia.

So, they have a natural interest in ice melting and climate change, because it makes this so much more profitable. But we also have something else!

We have the South Sea Route, which also starts from Korea, goes into the Pacific, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and then leads to the Baltic Sea.

This is a very interesting route, in which however, China is extremely interested. And what is our solution?

For the contribution between the North and South Sea Route, we can suggest a solution, the Three Seas solution.

We can create a shortcut. We can make a shortcut and take the cargo from …. to go from the Aegean Sea, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Gdańsk – to celebrate the Solidarity Trade Union Congress.

This is a phenomenal solution. Why is it a phenomenal solution? Because it is shorter, cheaper, faster and cleaner.

It is shorter by 5000 kilometres, cheaper: 120$ per ton for cargo, faster: 11 days and cleaner, because it saves half a million tons of CO2 emissions every year.

It is very much in synergy with Via Carpathia, very much in synergy with it.

This route, this shortcut, this solution will materialize the dream of European Union which we have had for the last 20 years.

I put this package in one function, which is drafting a European constitution. Another function was in adopting the Lisbon Treaty. What was that most important red thread, big idea in these two documents?

It was one thing: to make Europe one. And this solution, coming here down from… this is the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, from here to Gdańsk this solution makes Europe one.

The last proof of this fact was given only the day before yesterday, why the south route is so important.

All of us saw on CNN and all of the news stations about the new defence alliance between Australia, UK and the United States, the so-called AUKUS.

They agreed that the United States will provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, in order to defend the Indo-Pacific area from Chinese expansion.

This is crucial, this is really crucial and I’m very sorry about the French financial loss in this case, I think that NATO could have some role in this, the European Union could have some role in this, but this would be just a matter of the future. The reaction of France is understandable but listen very carefully to the reaction of China.

The reaction of China against AUKUS was phenomenally sharp. We heard President Xi Jinping speaking at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. So, what must we do for ABC+De? Just meet

This is the AUKUS, the agreement between the three countries: UK, United States and Australia. And yes, just do it, this is ABC, just do it and the big question is how? How to build it?

I can put you in touch with the Bulgarian engineers who developed the whole project. They have detailed plans on how to build this thing but what do we need?

The simple answer! The simple, short answer to what we need is: to inject imagination.

Inject imagination of existing tigers, because I saw that tigers are a theme at our conference. We don’t need to invent such tigers; we can just use the existing tigers.

Inject imagination and let’s see who the tigers are: Jeff Bezos; Richard Branson; Steve Jobs; Mark Zuckerberg; Sundar Pichai with the better Passy and Bill Gates with the worst Passy; and of course, the great Elon Musk with his hyperloop and inspiration for, that we are all following him nowadays into space. My appeal to the European Commission is the following: do not fine the tigers; do not punish the tigers.

Rather seduce them to come to Europe. We need these tigers to come to Europe and not to discourage them to come here and then go to India.

If Europe believes me then it believes in the Gen Free from Sophia! Look at this.

This is Gen Free Sophia, who wants to salute Gen Free in Warsaw, now I’m supposed to have some music:

“Ahead of the future, time and space. 30 more years. Atlantic Club Bulgaria” And may the force be with you.