Early parliamentary elections will be held in Bulgaria on 9 June 2024,[1][2] to elect members of the National Assembly. The election coincides with the European Parliament election on the same day.[1][2] This Bulgarian parliamentary election was initially scheduled to be held before 12 June 2027; however, as formation and approval of the rotation government scheduled to replace the Denkov Government failed on 20 March 2024, the Bulgarian President, Rumen Radev, announced after having concluded a further second and third failed attempt to form a government among the elected parties, that he would now appoint a new caretaker prime minister and caretaker government tasked to organize a new snap election. The election campaign has been scheduled to run from 10 May until 7 June.[3] The current 49th Parliament will stay in session at least until the election campaign begins. The snap elections will be the country's sixth since 2021.
Following several snap elections, the Bulgarian National Assembly had failed to put together a long-lasting government since 'anti-corruption' parties made a breakthrough in the April 2021 election.[4][5] The 2023 election saw little change from 2022, with Boyko Borisov's centre-right GERB—SDS narrowly winning over the centrist PP–DB alliance. The far right Revival (VAZ) and the populist There is Such a People (ITN) made gains, with the latter re-entering the Assembly after it failed to reach the electoral threshold in the 2022 election.[6][7]
On 22 May 2023, the PP- and GERB-led alliances agreed to form a government with a rotational premiership. Nikolai Denkov, PP's candidate, would be the Prime Minister for the first nine months of the government and Mariya Gabriel, the GERB candidate, would serve as deputy prime minister and foreign affairs minister. After nine months, the two would switch positions.[8]
Denkov resigned in accordance with the rotation agreement on 5 March, to allow Gabriel to become the new Prime Minister.[9] On 20 March 2024, the planned government rotation and signing of a renewed government failed[why?].[10][11][12] Negotiations within the first negotiation mandate ensued across the end of March,[13][14][15][16] but failed to produce any workable governments[why?].[17][18][19]
Two further rounds of negotiations will follow. The constitution declares that after a first failed attempt of government formation, the President must then ask the second-largest party in parliament (PP–DB) to try and form a government; and if this also fails he shall then give a final third attempt to any remaining party of his choosing.[20] If all three stages of negotiations fail, it is likely that elections would be held on 9 June 2024, coinciding with the European Parliament election on the same day.[21]
PP–DB declared on 26 March, that they would accept giving a second negotiation mandate a try, but it would be limited to a negotiation attempt to form a government together with GERB–SDS that fully respected their original rotation agreement of 2023. The proposed negotiation framework would be for GERB–SDS to sign the reform agreement negotiated with PP–DB, while GERB–SDS nominates a mutually acceptable next Prime Minister, and the current structure of the cabinet has to be preserved. If GERB–SDS by a written letter refused this PP–DB proposal, the second negotiation mandate would immediately be returned unfulfilled to the President.[22] A few hours later, GERB–SDS refused this proposal and called for early elections.[23]
On 27 March, PP–DB officially returned the second negotiation mandate incomplete to the President, requesting that the President schedule early legislative elections on the same day as the 2024 European Parliament election.[24][25] President Radev decided the following day to give the third mandate for an attempted government formation to ITN, the smallest party in the 49th National Assembly.[26] The third mandate was immediately returned incomplete by ITN, without wasting any time on fruitless negotiation attempts.[27]
Under Article 99 of the Constitution, when no agreement on formation of a government has been reached after all three attempted negotiation mandates have been tried, the President, in consultation with the parliamentary groups and on the proposal of the candidate for caretaker prime minister, appoints a caretaker government and schedules new early elections within two months from its inauguration.[28] On 29 March, the President appointed the Chairman of the National Audit Office, Dimitar Glavchev, as a candidate for caretaker prime minister;[29] and he was granted a one week deadline of until 6 April to propose the composition of the caretaker government.[30]
On 5 April, Dimitar Glavchev presented his proposal for the caretaker government,[31] and after consultations being held the same day on whether it could be approved by the representatives of all political parties from the 49th National Assembly,[32] the President announced he would sign a decree on 9 April 2024 approving the caretaker PM and his caretaker government, and at the same time he would sign a decree setting the date for new parliamentary elections to 9 June 2024.[33] On 9 April, caretaker prime minister Glavchev and his cabinet was confirmed and inaugurated by the National Assembly,[34] and the election date was set by presidential decree to 9 June 2024.[1]
The Central Election Commission subsequently adopted a schedule for the elections, regulating that the election campaign will begin at 12 am on 10 May and will end at midnight on 7 June.[3]
The current 49th Parliament will stay in session at least until the election campaign begins, where a decision of election recess is expected to be adopted by Parliament. According to MP Ivaylo Vulchev[bg], some of his colleagues even considered — to his dismay — that Parliament should not go on election recess, but continue meeting during the election campaign while however only allowing discussed topics within the realm of "such that it does not look as if someone has started his election campaign from the rostrum."[35]
Parties
Parliamentary parties
The table below lists the political party groups represented in the 49th National Assembly.
↑ As the full data for this poll was not released, it is possible that it includes undecided and uncertain voters. Recalculating the data to only include the numbers for the listed parties may be advised. Market Links often include undecided voters in their final results
↑ ITN are given seats in the Assembly despite being seemingly below the threshold as None of the above votes do not count towards the threshold.
↑ This poll reported the percentage respondents do not support any party, however the rest of the data was recalculated to exclude these percentages
Related Research Articles
The politics of Bulgaria take place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic, whereby the prime minister is the head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the National Assembly. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
The history of Bulgaria from 1990 to the present is the period of Bulgarian history that begins after the fall of Communism and the transition to a market economy.
Mariya Ivanova Gabriel is a Bulgarian politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister of Bulgaria and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2023 to 2024. A member of the GERB party, she previously served as European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth from 2019 to 2023, European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society from 2017 to 2019 and Member of the European Parliament from 2009 to 2017.
The Oresharski Government was the ninety-second cabinet of Bulgaria which took office on 29 May 2013. The government, led by Prime Minister Plamen Oresharski, is one of technocrats created following the 2013 election. The cabinet was dissolved on 6 August 2014 to make way for a caretaker government that would lead Bulgaria through early elections in October of the same year.
Rumen Georgiev Radev is a Bulgarian politician and former major general who has been the president of Bulgaria since 22 January 2017.
Parliamentary elections were held in Bulgaria on 4 April 2021 at the end of the term of National Assembly members elected in 2017. Parties in the governing coalition led by Boyko Borisov lost seats and no party leader was able to form a coalition government within the time limit. This triggered the July 2021 Bulgarian parliamentary election.
A rotation government or alternation government is one of the ways of forming of a government in a parliamentary state. It is a government that, during its term, will see the individual holding the post of prime minister switch, whether within the same political bloc or as part of a grand coalition. Israel has seen by far the most experience with such a governing arrangement. The governments of Ireland and Bulgaria are now in their first rotation agreement. Usually, this alternation is guided by constitutional convention with tactical resignation of the first officeholder to allow the second to form a new government. Israel, which established the rotation mechanism in 1984, codified it in 2020.
Snap parliamentary elections were held in Bulgaria on 11 July 2021 after no party was able or willing to form a government following the April 2021 elections. The populist party There Is Such a People (ITN), led by musician and television host Slavi Trifonov, narrowly won the most seats over a coalition of the conservative GERB and Union of Democratic Forces parties. Four other parties won seats in the 240-member Parliament as well.
General elections were held in Bulgaria on 14 November 2021 to elect both the President and the National Assembly. They were the country's third parliamentary elections in 2021, with no party able to form a government after the elections in April and July. A second round of the presidential elections were held on 21 November 2021 as no candidate was able to receive a majority of the vote in the first round.
Early parliamentary elections were held in Bulgaria on 2 October 2022 to elect members of the 48th National Assembly. The snap election was called after the fall of the Petkov Government, a four-party coalition, in June 2022. This was the fourth parliamentary election since 2021, an unprecedented situation in Bulgarian history, the previous elections being the April, July, and November 2021 elections.
We Continue the Change, sometimes translated as Change Continues, is a centrist, anti-corruption political party and formerly an electoral alliance in Bulgaria led by Kiril Petkov and Asen Vasilev, two former caretaker ministers. It was founded ahead of the November 2021 election. The party was officially registered on 15 April.
Kiril Petkov Petkov is a Bulgarian politician, economist, and entrepreneur, who served as Prime Minister of Bulgaria from December 2021 to August 2022. He is the co-leader of We Continue the Change, a political party he co-founded with Asen Vasilev.
Nikolai Denkov Denkov is a Bulgarian politician who served as Prime Minister of Bulgaria from 2023 to 2024. A member of the PP party, he previously served as a Member of the National Assembly from 2022 to 2023 and as Minister of Education and Science in 2017 and from 2021 to 2022. Denkov is a physicist, physical chemist and chemist. He is a member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and was a lecturer at the University of Sofia.
Early parliamentary elections were held in Bulgaria on 2 April 2023 to elect members of the National Assembly. These were initially scheduled to be held before November 2026; however, as no government was approved by the 48th Parliament, Bulgarian President Rumen Radev announced in January 2023 that he would call a snap election.
Bulgarian political crisis is a period of instability in Bulgaria, which has seen the country face five elections over two years: April 2021, July 2021, November 2021, October 2022 and April 2023. A further election is expected on June 9, 2024.
The Denkov Government is the 102nd cabinet of Bulgaria. It was approved by the parliament on 6 June 2023, and is a majority coalition of GERB and PP–DB. Per the coalition agreement, it is set to be a rotation government, where PP–DB's Nikolai Denkov would start with the premiership, with GERB's Mariya Gabriel serving as deputy prime minister, and after nine months, the two would switch positions. Per the agreement, Denkov and his cabinet resigned on 6 March 2024 in preparation for Gabriel to form her cabinet, although the Denkov government will stay on in a caretaker capacity until a new cabinet is formed.
The Forty-Ninth National Assembly is the current convocation of the National Assembly of Bulgaria, formed according to the results of the early parliamentary elections in Bulgaria, held on 2 April 2023.
Dimitar Borisov Glavchev is a Bulgarian politician who is the current caretaker Prime Minister of Bulgaria. A political independent, he is also the Head of the Chamber of Audit, currently on unpaid leave. He was previously a member of the GERB party and served as Member of the National Assembly from 2009 to 2021. In 2017, he shortly served as Chairman of the National Assembly.
The Glavchev Government is the 103rd cabinet of Bulgaria. It was appointed by President Rumen Radev on 9 April 2024, and sworn in the same day. The Glavchev Caretaker Cabinet was the first Caretaker Cabinet to be selected using the system created by the Constitutional Amendments of December, 2023, and was the first Caretaker Cabinet to be sworn in in the presence of the National Assembly, rather than in the presence of the President.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
