Ever since its inception 29 years ago, the mission of The Atlantic Club of Bulgaria has been to strengthen the unity, security and defence capacities of the West as a natural habitat of Bulgaria.

The ACB as a future- and youth-oriented organization has been focused on upgrading Bulgaria, NATO and the EU, to meet and forecast the existing and unexpected regional and global challenges and threats, including those generated by the progress in technologies.

Recognizing the critical importance of the trans-Atlantic bond for Europe’s security, the ACB has always served the role of a Bulgaria—US friendship think-tank and advocacy cluster.

The Atlantic Club of Bulgaria emerged in August 1990, following the parliamentary speech of MP Dr. Solomon Passy, which triggered the discussions of Bulgaria’s and New Europe’s accession to NATO and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact.

The ACB remained the first and only NGO in the Warsaw Pact aiming to openly bring about its disbanding. In 1992, the ACB joined the Atlantic Treaty Association (ATA) as its first member from a non-NATO country.

As a European advocacy think-tank, the ACB has hosted hundreds of Heads of States, governments and international organizations in public events, including NATO, SHAPE, the UN, EU, OSCE and UNESCO, as well as Nobel prize winners and world opinion leaders. From 1994 – 2002, the ACB was the driving force behind the historic visit to Bulgaria of Pope John Paul II, and in 1991 – of the XIV Dalai Lama of Tibet.

From 2001 – 2005, ACB’s Honorary President Dr. Passy, in his capacity as Foreign Minister in the Government of H.M. Simeon II, negotiated and signed the Accession Treaties of Bulgaria with both NATO and the EU, and raised the Bulgarian flag over the NATO HQ in Brussels.

From 1999 – 2006, the ACB’s leaders launched and implemented the project for US-BG joint defense bases in Bulgaria.

The Trabant car of ACB’s Founding President Dr. Passy, which drove NATO’s SecGen Dr. Manfred Wörner in 1991, later blessed by Pope John Paul II, is currently exhibited at the National Military History Museum in Sofia, and its replica is exhibited at the new NATO HQ as a donation that the ACB made to NATO.

Today, the ACB – itself a political innovation – is devoted to applying innovations to reform global security, international relations and democratic governance.

The ACB currently promotes enhanced:

• military presence of NATO in the Black Sea Region;
• cyber war and anti-disinformation capacities;
• common EU defense as a EU pillar of NATO;
• post-Brexit globalization of NATO;
• work on shaping NATO’s image in Europe and beyond.

In parallel, the ACB and its innovative cluster of NGOs Atlantic Digital Network (www.ADN.bg) are responsible for:

• the EU standard USB GSM charger (saving millions of tons of CO2 emissions);
• the free Wi-Fi #WiFi4EU initiative;
• the counter soil degradation EU policy initiative;
• the Bulgarian Space Law Draft;
• NATO sponsored projects in Telemedicine and Genotoxic Detector (jointly with the Laboratory for Molecular Generics).

The Atlantic Club Ridge and Passy Peak on Livingston Island, Antarctica, were named to commemorate ACB’s pioneering efforts to secure Bulgaria’s sustainable presence in Antarctica and the accession as a Consultative Party to the Antarctic Treaty in 1998.

Being a cluster prioritizing youth outreaching, the ACB’s dream project is “Happiness through i-Democracy”, outlined in Dr. Passy’s TEDx Talk at SciencePo Dijon University, suggesting big data analytics to rationalize global political management and bring people closer and faster to what they define as Happiness.