Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
In 2001, Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (Bulgarian: Симеон Сакскобурготски, Simeon Sakskoburgotski), son of Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria, who had fled from socialist Bulgaria as a nine-year-old boy in 1946, became Prime Minister of Bulgaria. Several years prior to that, in 1996, he had visited Bulgaria with his family of two princes and a princess and it was then when he announced he would soon come back to his homeland to form a new political party. Several years later, Sakskoburggotski formed the National Movement Simeon II (NDSV) and swept away both major parties in the elections of June 2001 with a landslide victory. As Prime Minister, he followed a strong and strictly pro-western course, as a result of which Bulgaria joined NATO in 2004 and the European Union in 2007. Economic and political conditions visibly improved, although economic growth was not as high as expected and unemployment and emigration remained high. Problematic areas remained corruption, health care, organized crime (though scaled down), and higher education, which all need to be massively reformed.