Bulgarian President Rumen Radev criticised former Prime Minister Boyko Borissov’s GERB party for stalling talks on forming a permanent government, Euractiv reported.
I call on the political parties to stop playing with the fate of the people and the future of the country. I have given enough time for them to fulfil their responsibility, but to easily delete everything and throw the country into another early parliamentary election with so many problems pending is a total demonstration of irresponsibility.
The party held seven general elections in the past four years. On Sunday, it announced the cancellation of coalition talks with Democratic Bulgaria, the Bulgarian Socialist Party and ITN due to disagreements over the position of prime minister.
Borissov insists that former parliament speaker Rosen Zhelyazkov be elected prime minister. However, Democratic Bulgaria pushes for the appointment of a prime minister who is not a member of any political party.
Bulgaria’s president has the right to set the conditions for issuing a mandate to form a government.
I will give a little more time – a few days, hoping the negotiators realise that their responsibility is not only to their own party and voters but to the whole nation.
The political crisis could cause the country to lose 80 per cent of the Recovery and Sustainability Plan budget. A fractured parliament failed to pass the necessary anti-corruption and climate legislation to allow the European Commission to allocate funds, according to Atanas Pekanov, the former deputy prime minister for EU funds.
Bulgaria will lose €9 billion on the National Recovery and Sustainability Plan and other projects. The caretaker cabinet cannot push through the necessary reforms under the recovery plan. The government has a passive attitude towards it as well.
