The political forces, including the parties that won and those that lost the latest European Parliament elections held on Sunday, started to talk about internal changes. Some of them will not be easy at all and will take some time, but the general guidelines have been already outlined.

Bulgaria’s Premier and leader of GERB party (which won the European elections in Bulgaria) Boyko Borissov who attended the informal European Summit of the European Heads of State and Government announced that he will make a complete purge of some party structures. At this stage Borissov specified only that he intended to reform or reestablish the structures of GERB in the cities of Pleven and Dobrich, because of the unsatisfactory performance of GERB in these Bulgarian cities at the latest European elections as compared to the previous elections for European Parliament. GERB will make a serious analysis of its performance at the EP elections later this week when the ideas for changes will be refined and expanded. According to unofficial information, Borissov is considering whether Tsvetan Tsvetanov should leave his positions at the party after he already left his position of Chairman of the Parliamentary group of GERB.

Yesterday, the Chairperson of the Bulgarian Socialist Party Kornelia Ninova resigned from her position. One day earlier she said that she will not hand in her resignation after the poor performance of BSP at the European Parliament elections. In the middle of June the party will convene an extraordinary congress which will accept or reject Ninova’s resignation and develop rules for direct election of new chairman. The possible election of a new chairman of BSP may take place at the end of July this year.The District Chairman of the Bulgarian Socialist Party in Plovdiv Georgi Gergov also insisted that the whole Executive Bureau of BSP should take responsibility and resign. The Bulgarian Socialist Party decided to end its boycott and return to the Bulgarian National Assembly, because some of its core supporters believe that the decision of the party leadership not to attend the Parliament sittings was a huge mistake.

The Movement for Rights and Freedoms which placed third at the European elections is satisfied with the election results and is not planning to make any changes in its governing bodies. It also became clear that the Chairman of DPS Mustafa Karadayi and MP Delyan Peevski who were elected MEPs will not go to the new European Parliament and stay in Bulgaria’s National Assembly instead. Thus, DPS will send other candidates from their election list to the European Parliament.

MPs from VMRO contend that the latest election results brought back to the agenda the idea to change the chairman of the Parliamentary group of the United Patriots Coalition Volen Siderov whose party Ataka had poor performance at the European elections. Several months ago the leader of NFSB (which is also part of the United Patriots coalition) Valeri Simeonov withdrew his confidence from Siderov, but VMRO did not support him back then. Now the Chairman of VMRO Krasimir Karakachanov is thought to have shared the idea for such a change and have hoped that Simeonov would also back this idea. Such reshuffle has the potential to break the small coalition (the United Patriots) which is part of the Bulgarian government and may trigger changes in the country’s cabinet as well.

We can soon expect more details about the changes discussed by the political forces, taking into consideration the forthcoming local elections in Bulgaria this autumn.

English version: Kostadin Atanasov