Photo: screenshot from video, archive, For the Truth”
The municipal councilors in Dryanovo received a remuneration of BGN 1,281 for February 2025, making them the highest paid in the Gabrovo region. By comparison, in the largest municipality, Gabrovo, municipal councilors received BGN 1,232 for the same month.
Calculations show that in Dryanovo, local elected officials earn BGN 204 (19%) more per month than the minimum wage for the country.
According to a newsletter from the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy, the average salary in Bulgaria in the middle of this year was 2,443 BGN, which means that in Dryanovo, the salary of a municipal councilor for approximately eight hours of work per month is about half of the average monthly salary for the country.
Remuneration varies significantly between the four municipalities
according to information obtained by “For the truth” in the spring of this year under the Access to Public Information Act. In February 2025, the difference between the highest salary (Dryanovo Municipal Council – BGN 1,281) and the lowest (Sevlievo Municipal Council – BGN 1,077) reached BGN 204, or about 19%.
In fact, in Sevlievo, municipal councilors agreed on a decision to receive the minimum wage for the country, and their remuneration for all months from the beginning of 2025 is exactly BGN 1,077, while in Gabrovo it varies by plus or minus one lev in the first months of the year (BGN 1,233 for January, BGN 1,232 for February, BGN 1,230 for March). In the other two municipalities in the region, there are differences of about BGN 30 (in Dryanovo and Tryavna in February, salaries are about BGN 30 higher than in January).
Sevlievo “saves” 204 levs per month per councilor compared to Dryanovo.
Over a year, this amounts to a difference of BGN 2,448 per municipal councilor, which raises the logical question: do municipal councilors in Dryanovo receive 19% higher remuneration because they work 19% more or better than their colleagues in Sevlievo?
The working hours of a municipal councilor include one meeting per month (sometimes there are extraordinary meetings, but they usually concern a single issue that requires a quick decision in order to meet certain deadlines) and one meeting of a standing committee. If we assume that this amounts to eight hours of work per month, the figures are even more absurd.
It turns out that a municipal councilor in Dryanovo works for BGN 160 per hour.
This means that for a four-hour meeting, he receives BGN 640, which is more than the daily wage of an employee or worker on minimum wage, who has to work three days for BGN 160.
Here is what a similar breakdown looks like for the other municipalities.
The salary of a municipal councilor in Gabrovo of BGN 1,232 for February this year divided conditionally by 8 hours (meetings in Gabrovo usually last a long time and are among the most lively in terms of debate in the region, ed.) shows that his remuneration for one hour of work is BGN 154. In Tryavna, they receive BGN 136 per hour. The lowest remuneration is in Sevlievo – BGN 134 per hour, but there are rarely debates on the items discussed and a regular session lasts about two hours, which changes the calculations. For the purposes of this analysis, however, we are using the same source data, so it is not entirely accurate, but it does shed considerable light on why the appetite for local government is so great when local elections approach.
