Bulgaria's Military Intelligence Service has finished 94% of the information tasks it set for 2025. The service's deputy director, Captain (Navy) Sergey Valev, told MPs about the progress.

He appeared before parliament's committee that oversees the security services, the use of special surveillance tools and access to data under the Electronic Communications Act. MPs reviewed the service's annual report for 2025 and approved it, with 5 votes in favor, none against and 3 abstentions.

Valev said the service had prepared 1,958 information documents for domestic users in all, 117 of them on request. It sent 101 documents to NATO, 25 of which answered specific requests for information. It sent 74 documents to the European Union, 59 of which answered requests from the EU Military Staff.

The deputy director also gave an update on the service's public procurement over the past year. It had planned 96 tenders and carried out 79. By the end of last year, four were still not finished and 13 had not even started. In the end the service signed 58 contracts, Valev said.

He said the service was already taking steps to grow in 2026. The aim is to reach, step by step, the staff numbers set out in the service's development vision through 2032 and in Bulgaria's armed forces development programme through 2031.

Valev pointed to one problem holding back recruitment. Money for staff salaries is planned and paid based on how many people worked at the service as of July 1 of the previous year, not on the approved staff numbers. This makes it harder to fill vacant posts.

The service now has 86% of the staff it needs. Of total spending, 64.4% goes on salaries, 13.66% on day-to-day running costs, 19.67% on capital spending, and 2.15% on administration and other needs, Valev said.

"The financial limit on hiring isn't just a problem for our service — it applies across the armed forces, and it's not about one particular year, it's a general rule," Valev told the committee. He said the service could take on new staff and more of them, but only within the same salary budget — meaning it would have to cut the pay of people already working there. He added that money isn't the only obstacle to recruitment, and other barriers exist too, which is why the service still has a 15–16% staff shortfall.

Valev explained that in 2025 the service focused mainly on operational intelligence work. It gathers strategic intelligence and spots risks and threats to Bulgaria's defense and national security from outside the country in good time, he said. It kept working with Bulgaria's own security and public order agencies, and with NATO's and the EU's intelligence bodies, as well as with the intelligence agencies of member states and partner services, he added.

Over the year, seven meetings were held as part of an informal dialogue between representatives of EU member states' military intelligence organizations — an initiative the service itself proposed. Valev said this has cemented the service's leading role in improving intelligence cooperation across the EU. He also said an officer from the service still heads the intelligence directorate of the EU Military Staff.