Bulgarian parliamentary represented parties reach agreement on priorities before early elections

All Bulgarian parties present in the Parliament, apart from Ataka, have reached an agreement on the priorities in the remaining days of before early elections and will not boycott its work, the newswire Novinite reported July 8.

“At the consultations, called in by the Speaker of Parliament Mihail Mikov, the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) and the opposition GERB agreed to support the update of the National Health Insurance Fund (NZOK),” reported the newswire, adding that the three parties will resume the work shortly.

The leader of DPS, Lyutiv Mestan, hinted that his party will support an update of the entire Bulgarian state budget, if necessary, as long as the problems with the lack of funding for the health care were solved. He also dismissed concerns that the proposed amendments to the Bulgarian Penal Code criminalizing the spreading of false information that lead to bank panic would result in censorship.

“The sole aim of these amendments is to criminalize actions, which deliberately destabilize the banking sector, from which would suffer both the public interest and the interests of the creditors and the depositors,” Mestan said, as cited by the newswire.

Tsetska Tsatcheva, a spokesperson of the opposition party GERB, said that her party would also support the idea of additional funding to the health care sector and an update of the state budget, if necessary. 

In mid-June local media reported that the Bulgarian Parliament agreed to hold early parliamentary elections this autumn, between September and October.