The Bulgarian parliament during debates before the voting on a new government, Sofia, Bulgaria, on July 3.Spasiyana Sergieva/Reuters
Bulgaria faces its seventh parliamentary election in just three years after the last of three political parties tapped by President Rumen Radev to form a coalition government returned the mandate on Monday due to a lack of support.
The Balkan country has been plagued by revolving-door governments since anti-graft protests in 2020 helped topple a coalition led by the centre-right GERB party.
GERB, currently the largest party in parliament, and the reformist We Continue the Change (PP) had each failed in turn to form a stable coalition following an inconclusive June 8 election, and on Monday the small anti-elite There Is Such a People (ITN) also handed back the mandate.
After meeting Radev, Toshko Yordanov, chairman of the ITN parliamentary group, told reporters that the parties had been unable to find common ground on forming a new government.
“The political wisdom of one party was not enough to make a decision … so we return the mandate unfulfilled,” said Yordanov, whose party had come sixth in the election, winning just 16 seats in the 240-member parliament.
Radev must now appoint a caretaker prime minister and has days to call another snap parliamentary election, the seventh since 2021, which must then happen within two months.
“The spiral of inconclusive elections continues … and (it)not only causes irritation, but also unlocks a number of destructive processes,” Radev said.
“I appeal for a meaningful political debate and fair play in the weeks ahead. Otherwise, we are doomed to repeat procedures that more and more people see as pointless,” Radev said.
June’s election was triggered by the collapse in March of a coalition comprising GERB, which had held power for much of the previous 15 years, and the PP party.
GERB came first in the June vote, winning 68 seats, while the PP party secured 39. Both parties are broadly pro-EU and pro-market, but have been dogged by persistent bickering and personal rivalries.
Bulgaria, the European Union’s poorest member state and one of its most corrupt, needs a period of stable government to improve the flow of EU funds into its creaking infrastructure.
The political stalemate is also hampering its efforts to join the euro and to fully participate in Europe’s open-border Schengen area.