Bulgaria and the euro government, notably economy minister Petar Dimitrov, have speculated about unilaterally introducing the euro, which was not well-met by the European Commission. The lev is not part of ERM-II, but since the launch of the euro in 1999, it has been pegged to the euro at a fixed rate of €1 = BGN 1.95583 through a strictly managed currency board. In all of the three latest annual assessment reports, Bulgaria managed to comply with four out of the five economic convergence criteria for euro adoption, only failing to comply with the criteria requiring the currency of the state to have been
Armenians in Bulgaria First Bulgarian Empire in the 9th century. After both Bulgaria and Armenia were conquered by the Ottoman Empire, many Armenian settlers from Armenia, Crimea, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Asia Minor arrived in what is now Bulgaria due to internal migration. Those coming from Armenia were forced to seek a new homeland because of their country's devastation by Arabs, Persians, and Turks. With Bulgaria gaining autonomy in the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, many Armenians fled the Ottoman Empire because of the Hamidian massacres in the 1890s and settled in the country, particularly in the major cities of Plovdiv