GERB and United Patriots agreed on securing quorum in future Parliament sittings

Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Boyko Borissov on February 19 called a meeting of the coalition council of ruling majority to discuss ways to secure quorums for future sittings in Parliament.

The meeting was called after the opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party’s national council voted on February 17 to boycott Parliament. BSP leader Kornelia Ninova threatened that her parliamentary group would walk out of Parliament because of the new election rules and on 18^th of February said that it would persist in this despite that GERB said they would reinstate the previous preference voting rules.

Ataka party leader Volen Siderov, who heads the parliamentary group of government minority partner the United Patriots, We decided to act so that parliamentarianism does not have an alternative, that being absent from the National Assembly is not a solution, even when you are an opposition. We think it is better to pass laws to move forward topics that people expect us to. And perhaps this will become more neat in the absence of the Bulgarian Socialist Party.

Deputy Prime Minister Krassimir Karakachanov, a co-leader of the United Patriots, said: What we have discussed is to coordinate our legislative programmes, not to rely on the BSP, which think that through parliamentarianism they are campaigning for the European elections or for the upcoming local elections. If they have decided to go on their own scenario, after all, that's their problem.

Tsvetan Tsvetanov, parliamentary leader of GERB, said that the BSP had distanced itself from real parliamentarism.

Answering a question by BNT, Volen Siderov said that whether the United Patriots' parties will be standing jointly together or not in the European Elections, the coalition remains stable and the government of Boyko Borissov has to complete its term of office because of very important legislative initiatives. Shortly thereafter, it became clear that Valeri Simeonov's party, the NFSB, would stand in the European elections alone, and he was nominated as a leader of the list.