On Friday, April 26, the election campaign for Members of the European Parliament starts. The election will be held on May 26 and it will be the fourth EP election in this country after those of 2007, 2009 and 2014. A total of 15 parties, 7 coalitions and 9 independent candidates will fight for the 17 available positions. It looks like the race will be tense and even fierce. Not just because of the high number of contenders.

While sharing government’s power with the United Patriots coalition, for the election of MEPs, GERB have united with the UDF, “Nikola Petkov” agrarian political party and the center-right United Agrarians Party. This has provoked turmoil in the right-wing political space and the Bulgarian Citizens' Movement even refused to participate in the upcoming race, so as to avoid yet another "fratricidal battle between right-wing parties".

Political forces part of the United Patriots coalition will fight for EP mandates separately from each other. IMRO claims that after failure of collaborative efforts with patriotic forces, they will rely on support from patriotic thinkers. This is why independent representatives of the so-called "civilian quota" have been included in their electoral roll. The NFSB united with the little-known "Middle European Class" Formation and will participate in the election under the name "Patriots for Valery Simeonov." Ataka registered as a stand-alone participant at the last moment, waiting to see if IMRO would call for joint participation. According to Ataka, the failure of attempts for joint participation of the patriotic forces is to blame on NFSB, while IMRO simply did not have enough courage to ally with Ataka.

Forces in the left political spectrum will appear in the elections as the BSP for Bulgaria Coalition. The BSP is currently experiencing a difficult internal situation. European Socialist Leader Sergei Stanishev would have stayed out of the list prepared by the party's Executive Bureau but a special plenary insisted that Stanishev was included. The rearrangement of the list was defined by some as censuring BSP leader Kornelia Ninova.

Only the MRF goes to the upcoming elections in a monolithic fashion and what seems impressive in their list is the young age of some of its candidates for MEPs, which is about 30 years.

But the election campaign also starts at a moment of sharp tensions between the main subjects of domestic politics. Scandals over acquiring real estates at dubiously low prices have led to a series of resignations among the ruling coalition. Accusations against prominent members of the leftist parties also followed. This picture at the start of the election campaign has led experts and political observers to assume that in the battle for seats in the EP internal issues with bitter flavor would prevail over European ones.

In general, high electoral activity is expected. The scandals of the so-called "Apartment Gate" series cut the lead of GERB and together with its electoral allies it enjoys the support of 31.5% against 32.1% for the BSP. The MRF has support of about 11% and is the third formation that will surely have MEPs. As of the start of the election campaign, there is no other formation that seems to reaches the minimum of 5.88% of the votes required to win a mandate in the EP. However, observers report that this is only a temporary proportion of the forces that may change over the course of the electoral campaign itself.

The election campaign for MEPs in Bulgaria ends at 24:00 on 24 May 2019.

English: Alexander Markov