Biography
Rumiana Bachvarova is a graduate of Sofia University with a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Sociology, with many years of experience in the area of marketing, media, public policy research. She was founder and Managing Director of the Market Links polling agency (2001 to 2009).
From 2009 to 2013 she was Chief of Cabinet of the Prime Minister. At this position, she worked for making Bulgaria cofounder of the Open Government Partnership Global Initiative in 2011, alongside the United States, Great Britain and Brazil. As one of the first countries to accede, Bulgaria is currently a frontrunner among the 70+ initiative member-countries in opening its public databases to citizens, businesses and journalists.
In 2014, Rumiana Bachvarova was elected Member of Parliament to the 43rd National Assembly of the Republic of Bulgaria. As a member of the new government (2014-2017), she served as Deputy Prime Minister for coalition relations and administrative reform. From March 2015 to 2017, she also served as Minister of Interior.
During her office as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, Bulgaria moved up in the open data rankings, getting among top ten European countries in the area of Open Data, and 16th in the world according to the Open Knowledge Foundation Open Data Index.
As Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, Rumiana Bachvarova had a key role in managing the impact of the migration crisis on Bulgaria. Within her term as Minister of Interior and owing to the improved border and migration management measures introduced by the Ministry under her leadership, migratory pressure towards the country and the Southeastern external border of the EU was brought down to its lowest levels since the onset of the refugee crisis.
From 2019 to 2023 she served as Ambassador of Republic of Bulgaria to Israel.
