Bulgaria’s Parliament reverts to being eight-group as one ceases to exist
A few days after becoming a nine-group Parliament, Bulgaria’s National Assembly reverted to being eight-group.
This happened on March 21 at the close of a marathon 22-hour sitting to vote on the second reading of Budget 2025, when Speaker Natalia Kiselova announced that the group of Mech – a populist-nationalist party – had fallen below the minimum number of 10 members to be recognised as a parliamentary group.
This was a consequence of the resignation as an MP of Mech’s Samuil Slavov, who stepped down in the wake of reports that he had served time in prison in the United States for ATM fraud.
Slavov had been sworn in on March 14, amid a reshuffle in Parliament caused by a Constitutional Court decision and a recalculation of seat allocations by the Central Electoral Commission that resulted in populist-nationalist Velichie entering as the National Assembly’s ninth and smallest group.
Plamen Petrov was named to replace Slavov, but has not yet been sworn in as an MP, leaving Mech with nine MPs.
Parliament’s rules of procedure entitle each parliamentary group to have a deputy speaker. With the Mech group ceasing to exist, party leader Radostin Vassilev loses his place as a deputy speaker.
All memberships of parliamentary committees of Mech MPs are terminated.
The rules of procedure state that MPs of a dissolved parliamentary group sit as “independents” and even if a party again has 10 MPs, it cannot re-form as a parliamentary group. Members of a dissolved parliamentary group may not join another existing parliamentary group.
Velichie now becomes Parliament’s eighth and smallest group.
With Velichie’s MPs having taken the oath on March 19, that means that the 51st National Assembly was nine-group for just two days – March 19 and 20.
Later on March 21, Vassilev said that Kisilova had erred in her announcement. He denied that the disbanding of his group was lawful and said that they would report Kisilova to prosecutors.
Please support independent journalism by clicking on the button below. For as little as three euro a month or the equivalent in other currencies, you can support The Sofia Globe via patreon.com and get access to exclusive subscriber-only content:
