Bulgarian Parliament’s second-largest group declines mandate to seek to form government
At a ceremony lasting just a few minutes on January 14, the Bulgarian Parliament’s second-largest group, We Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria, declined President Roumen Radev’s offer of the second mandate to seek to form a government.
This follows Parliament’s largest group, Boiko Borissov’s GERB-UDF, having on January 12 declined the first mandate, and is a step in a process that seems to set Bulgaria inexorably on the path to early elections in the spring.
The January 14 ceremony coincided with Parliament’s first sitting of 2026, with the legislature set to deal with various proposed amendments to election law, including those tabled by WCC – DB for voting to take place solely using machines.
WCC – DB’s Nadezhda Yordanova used the meeting with Radev to appeal to the public to turn out in support for a protest planned for later in the day to call for voting solely by machine.
With the first two mandates having come to nothing, Radev has a free hand to choose to which of the other parliamentary groups to offer the third and final mandate.
Should that step also prove fruitless, Radev must appoint a caretaker Prime Minister and decree a date for the holding of parliamentary elections.
The current events were set in train by the December 2025 resignation of the Rossen Zhelyazkov government in response to massive street protests in Bulgaria and abroad, against corruption and abuse of power, and in particular against Borissov and Magnitsky Act-sanctioned Delyan Peevski, seen as holding sway over the government while formally not participating in it.
