SOFIA: Bulgaria’s parliament on Tuesday approved a new pro-European government established by “We Continue the Change” and the centre-right GERB party, ending a two-year-long deadlock marked by five consecutive elections.
The country’s 240-seat National Assembly elected the new technocrat government without difficulty, which secured a majority of 132 votes, AFP said.
Researcher and former education minister Nikolay Denkov of the PP-DB coalition will take the office of prime minister for nine months, before EU former commissioner for innovation Mariya Gabriel takes over as part of a rotation.
The graft-ridden Balkan country has been struggling to elect a new cabinet to implement badly required reforms.
In May, Gabriel — tasked by the GERB party to lead talks — alongside the PP-DB coalition, unveiled a plan of a power-sharing government with rotating prime ministers.
Gabriel, 44, who recently quit her post in Brussels, will hold the foreign affairs ministry under the leadership of sixty-year-old Denkov, before taking over as premier in March 2024.
Bulgaria plagued by instability
The European Union’s poorest nation has been plagued by political instability and ruled by caretaker governments over the last two years and a fifth vote in early April could not provide a clear majority.
The country never before had a rotating premiership, but now it had no option but a coalition cabinet.
The new cabinet’s priorities include the immediate approval of a budget, reforming the justice system, and making advancement in accession to the eurozone and Schengen area.
Weakened by the political turmoil, Bulgaria was forced to abandon its efforts to join the eurozone in 2024 and could not accede to the Schengen free movement zone.
The new government will also adopt a new pro-European position within the eastern European nation amid Russia’s conflict with Ukraine.
Under the pro-Russian President Rumen Radev, Bulgaria’s interim governments refused to send direct military assistance to Kyiv.
The GERB party of three-time prime minister Boyko Borisov governed the country nearly uninterruptedly between 2009 and 2021.
But the party lost many supporters and became badly isolated by other political parties after wide-spread anti-corruption protests against it in 2020.
