Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, and the Black Sea to the east. Bulgaria covers a territory of 110,994 square kilometres (42,855 sq mi), and is the sixteenth-largest country in Europe. Sofia is the nation's capital and largest city; other major cities are Plovdiv, Varna and Burgas.
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.
A caretaker government is a temporary ad hoc government that performs some governmental duties and functions in a country until a regular government is elected or formed. Depending on specific practice, it usually consists of either randomly selected or approved members of parliament or outgoing members until their dismissal.
The prime minister of Bulgaria is the head of government of Bulgaria. They are the leader of a political coalition in the Bulgarian parliament – known as the National Assembly of Bulgaria – and the leader of the cabinet. At times, the prime minister has been appointed by the President of Bulgaria.
Kimon Georgiev Stoyanov was a Bulgarian general who was the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Bulgaria from 1934 to 1935 and again from 1944 to 1946.
The Government of Ireland is the cabinet that exercises executive authority in Ireland.
The Union of Democratic Forces is a political party in Bulgaria, founded in 1989 as a union of several political organizations in opposition to the communist government. The Union was transformed into a single unified party with the same name. The SDS is a member of the European People's Party (EPP). In the 1990s the party had the largest membership in the country, with one million members, but has since splintered into a number of small parties totaling no more than 40,000 members. The SDS proper had 12,000 members in 2016.
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.
The Armistice of Salonica was signed on 29 September 1918 between Bulgaria and the Allied Powers in Thessaloniki. The convention followed a request by the Bulgarian government for a ceasefire on 24 September.
Iurie Leancă is a Moldovan politician who was the Prime Minister of Moldova from 2013 until 2015. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration from 2009 to 2013 as part of the First and Second Filat Cabinet.
Plamen Vasilev Oresharski is a Bulgarian politician who served as Prime Minister of Bulgaria from 2013 to 2014. Previously Oresharski was Minister of Finance from 2005 to 2009 in the Cabinet of the Triple Coalition with Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev.
The ninetieth Cabinet of Bulgaria was a minority government chaired by Boyko Borisov. The government was formed after Borisov's party, GERB, won the 2009 parliamentary election. It remained in power relying on support from the opposition parties for almost four years before resigning following nationwide protests.
Boyko Metodiev Borisov is a Bulgarian politician who served as the prime minister of Bulgaria from 2009 to 2013, 2014 to 2017, and 2017 to 2021, making him Bulgaria's second-longest serving prime minister to date.
Parliamentary elections were held in Bulgaria on 5 October 2014 to elect the 43rd National Assembly. GERB remained the largest party, winning 84 of the 240 seats with around a third of the vote. A total of eight parties won seats, the first time since the beginning of democratic elections in 1990 that more than seven parties entered parliament. Boyko Borisov then became prime minister as head of a coalition with the Reformist Bloc and with outside support from the Patriotic Front and the Alternative for Bulgarian Revival.
Corruption in Bulgaria has decreased in recent years, after a series of reforms implemented through EU guidance. Among recent improvements, amendments to the constitution in 2015 brought about a reform of the Supreme Judicial Council and a stronger judicial inspectorate. Furthermore, the broader legislative framework has seen a number of reforms over the years, in particular through the amendments of the Judicial System Act in 2016 and of the Criminal Procedure Code in 2017.
The ninety-sixth Cabinet of Bulgaria took office on May 4, 2017. It was a coalition government that was chaired by Boyko Borisov. The government was formed after the Borisov's party, GERB, won the 2017 parliamentary election. However, GERB won only 95 out of 240 seats in the National Assembly and therefore needed to form a coalition in order to govern.
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.
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.
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.
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.
