Head of State Rumen Radev held talks at 2 Dondukov street with the French Writer Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, who is among the most read French-language authors and playwrights in the world. Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt is visiting Bulgaria to mark the 70^th anniversary of the great Bulgarian actor and Director of the Ivan Vazov National Theater Marius Donkin. The Head of State’s wife Desislava Radev also attended the meeting with Schmitt.

The topics the talks focused on were the impact of the deep social, political and economic transformations in Europe on the cultural perceptions of the European peoples and the evolutionary and revolutionary approaches to the events unfolding on the Old continent.

The contemporary person is really facing the dilemma to be an optimist in terms of time of place, in which to seek their happiness or future, the Head of State recalled Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s words. Rumen Radev added that no one can achieve real peace, no matter where they go if they have failed to find it in themselves in the first place.

In Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s words, European policy should not only in terms of words, but also in terms of real actions restore the citizens’ optimism. “There are struggles that can never be completely won, but should always be carried on and one of them is the struggle of intelligence against stupidity. What is beautiful in such a situation is not the victory, but the reason to carry on the very struggle,” Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt said.

At the meeting Rumen Radev gave as a gift to Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt a plaquette with the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet and emphasized that when the letters come from a nation’s heart, they have an enormous symbolic meaning not only for Bulgarians, but also for the European culture and spirituality.