Former EU Commissioner Mariya Gabriel on Monday withdrew her nomination to be the next Bulgarian prime minister, according to Politico.
Gabriel’s withdrawal capped two weeks of tortuous negotiations between her center-right GERB party and the reformist anti-corruption alliance of We Continue the Change and Democratic Bulgaria (PP-DB) in what was supposed to be an agreed government rotation.
Mariya Gabriel further writes that “the coordinated refusal and unwillingness to participate in the Gabriel-Denkov Cabinet of 11 ministers from the Denkov-Gabriel Cabinet who have submitted statements to that effect, and the lack of agreement during the subsequent negotiations, makes meaningless the procedure for electing a prime minister and a government. That means that the constitutional procedure, which has started, cannot be completed successfully,” Bulgarian News Agency reports.
Nikolai Denkov, who represents We Continue the Change, led Bulgaria’s government for the first nine months of the planned rotation, with Gabriel as his deputy and foreign minister. He resigned earlier this month, theoretically paving the way for Gabriel to become prime minister for the next nine months.
Gabriel, who previously ran the EU’s digital and innovation portfolios across two terms as a European commissioner, left the EU post last year after being picked as prime minister nominee by the former leader and GERB boss Boyko Borissov.
Now it’s all fallen apart — and, as the second-largest party in parliament, Denkov’s We Continue the Change is next in line to have the chance to form a government.
We Continue the Change said the proposed composition of the Council of Ministers was not agreed with them.
“Not a small part of the nominated ministers did not agree to participate in such a Cabinet, including myself; I have never agreed to participate in a Cabinet with such composition,” Denkov said. “In this situation, I have prepared a declaration in which I state that I do not want to be nominated in this composition of the Council of Ministers.”
GERB’s Prime Minister-designate announced her plan to withdraw at a news conference on Sunday. She also said there that her party is not going to participate in negotiations on the formation of a government when the President offers a mandate to the second largest group in Parliament, Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB), according to Bulgarian News Agency.
In a subsequent statement on the Bulgarian National Television on Sunday, outgoing Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov urged the GERB leadership to sign an agreement with CC-DB and form a government with Gabriel as Prime Minister and all other ministers remaining unchanged from the Denkov cabinet.
Following long talks between GERB-UDF and CC-DB, on March 19, Mariya Gabriel announced that she was ready with a coalition government and President Rumen Radev issued a decree asking Parliament to vote Gabriel into office as Prime Minister. Then CC-DB said that the proposed government had not been endorsed by them and they would not participate. Talks with GERB resumed in a quiet manner – until GERB-UDF announced Sunday that they quit.
Bulgaria is heading for its sixth general election in three years, causing political instability that could damage the country’s efforts to join the eurozone and achieve full Schengen membership, according to Euractiv.