Bulgaria’s caretaker government budgets 65M euro for April’s early parliamentary elections
The interim government will allocate 65 million euro for the budget for the early parliamentary elections to be held on April 19, caretaker Prime Minister Andrei Gyurov said on February 23.
Gyurov was speaking at the first meeting of the caretaker government, which took office on February 19.
He said that the government will guarantee a fair vote and will spare no expense to do so.
“Many people will say unnecessary expenses again and I understand them,” Gyurov said.
“They come from people who work, pay their taxes and expect every euro to be spent wisely,” he said.
“The truth is that elections are not an expense. They are an investment in the legitimacy of the government, in the trust between citizens and institutions, in the right of every Bulgarian, no matter where they are, to be heard.”
“These 65 million euro are not for the government and the parties. They are for the process, for the remuneration of the members of the election commissions, for the people from whom we will require to count every vote, for the CEC’s explanatory campaign and the training of the commissions,” he said.
“The vote cannot be entrusted to people who are illiterate and who cannot distinguish between a valid and an invalid ballot,” Gyurov said.
“The funds are also for the Interior Ministry, because in recent years we have become convinced that order and rules on election day are not a given, as well as for video surveillance – if it were not for the cameras, an entire party would have remained outside Parliament,” he said, referring to a revision of results of the previous parliamentary election.
He also highlighted the need to update the voters rolls.
Speaking after the meeting, caretaker Finance Minister Georgi Klisurski said that the budget for the April elections would increase further, reaching about 75 to 80 million euro.
The increase would involve a further 10 million euro because of paper ballots and uniform screens for polling stations, Klisurski said.
Gyurov’s interim administration suffered a hiccough a day after it took office, when the Deputy Prime Minister for Fair Elections – a newly-created post – resigned in the face of allegations levelled by detractors of the caretaker government. No announcement has yet been made about filling the vacant post.
Bulgaria is heading to early parliamentary elections, the eighth time since spring 2021 that Bulgarians elect a legislature, following the December 2025 resignation of the government and after the process of offering mandates to seek to get a new government elected by Parliament proved fruitless.
(Photo: Clive Leviev-Sawyer)
