Treaty of Craiova

The Treaty of Craiova was an important agreement between the Kingdom of Bulgaria and the Kingdom of Romania through which Bulgaria recovered some of the territories it had lost in the First World War. The document was signed in Craiova on 7 September 1940 by Bulgarian Foreign Minister Bogdan Filov and his Romanian counterpart Mihail Sencianu. It returned Southern Dobruja, with a population of around 320,000, to Bulgaria. This territory had been taken under the Treaty of Bucharest in 1913.
On 19 August 1940, the two countries engaged in arduous and difficult negotiations. Romania attempted to make minimal concessions but was compelled to return southern Dobruja to Bulgaria. Its recovery held enormous strategic and symbolic importance after many years of territorial losses and political instability. The agreement was reached under strong pressure from Germany, the Soviet Union and Italy.
The Treaty of Craiova remains a key moment in Bulgarian history, reflecting the aspiration to restore national territorial integrity and revise the unjust post-war treaties. At the same time, it preceded one of the region’s most unstable and dramatic periods, during the 1940s.

A map from Wikipedia’s archives shows the territory taken from Bulgaria under the Treaty of Bucharest (1913) and returned under the Treaty of Craiova in 1940. It depicts the boundaries of Southern Dobruja before and after the agreement.