At the end of the past week, the Bulgarian Socialist Party warned that it would not participate in plenary sessions of the parliament, unless debates concerned vote on the resignation of National Assembly President Dimitar Glavchev; the state budget, or the motion of no confidence against the government. After Glavchev filed his resignation, which was quickly accepted by the ruling party, the BSP saw the need to update its position.

At a National Council level on Saturday, the Socialists decided that their leader, Kornelia Ninova, would vote in support of GERB's proposal for constitutional changes to abolish limitation periods for privatization crimes, but at the same time the parliamentary group of BSP would vote against the changes. Thus, the BSP wanted to demonstrate on the one hand that it did not fear allegations of Ninova's involvement in unclear privatization deals in the past and on the other, to take into account the opinion of its lawyers that GERB's proposal was unconstitutional. This tactical maneuver is so overwrought that it caused negative reactions in the BSP itself, while opposition circles in it spoke of weakening positions of the party leader.

The socialists have not given up on their call for no-confidence vote and would file it together with DPS after the debates on the state budget. However, the cause of the vote has faded away after it became clear that BSP was motivated by a desire to oppose GERB; the aim of DPS was removing the United Patriots from power, while the "Volya" party abandoned its original intentions to support the vote.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, four right-wing formations that are not present in parliament announced an initiative called the "Bulgarian Manifesto for Europe" in a bid to fight the lack of clear priorities and vision for turning Bulgaria into a modern European country. Eight months after the failure of the idea of ​​joint participation at parliamentary elections, now the DSB/New Republic, "Yes, Bulgaria", "Greens" and DEOS are making a new effort for united action. But as a result of the previous failure, today the “authentic rightists” are out of the parliament, and even if their new reunification efforts succeeded, results would probably be visible during the next elections. Until then, the “Borissov 3” Cabinet will continue to govern untroubled by the opposition, and its next major challenges would be neither the adoption of the new state budget, nor the request for a vote of no confidence. The real challenge will be the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of EU from January 1 next year.

Against the backdrop of recent political tensions in Bulgaria, it is curious to point out that in order for the presidency to be successful, support has so far been repeatedly promised by all political forces in parliament. The last vow for such support was given just two weeks ago by BSP Deputy Chair, Denitsa Zlateva, who told the Bulgarian National Radio that the Presidency of the Council of the EU was not just the responsibility of parties in power, and after declaring support for its successful implementation, BSP had so far proven that the task was bigger than party-level interests and was of national importance. But is that really so?

English: Alеxander Markov