Members of the European Parliament have criticized Bulgarian Foreign Minister Kristian Vigenin’s plans to reinstate agents of the former state security service in their diplomatic positions, the Sofia News Agency reported on Saturday, June 1, according to RIA Novosti.

Former Socialist MEP Kristian Vigenin, who assumed the post of foreign minister on Wednesday, said that many of the country's diplomats, exposed as agents of the communist-era State Security Service, DS, had suffered humiliation at the hands of the previous government of the center-right Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria party, GERB.

The former MEP’s colleagues said that the civilized world "pays respect and tribute to the victims of the totalitarian regimes, not to the officers of the secret police who participated in these repressions directly or indirectly," the Focus news agency reported.

"The efforts to reinstate diplomats, agents of the former State Security are not a good signal for Bulgaria," German MEPs Michael Galer and Elmar Brok said in a statement.

"To our great disappointment we learned that our former colleague, Kristian Vigenin… declared that the reinstatement of former collaborators or full-time employees of the former State Security, who had until recently held senior positions at Bulgaria's diplomatic service, would be a main priority," the MEPS said.

In September 2011, Bulgaria’s Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov ordered a group of ambassadors to return to Sofia. The envoys had been exposed as collaborators or agents of the communist-era State Security (DS).