Bulgarian Parliament approves 2026 Budget package at second reading
Bulgaria’s National Assembly finished passing the 2026 Budget at second reading on July 24, having spent most of the week’s sittings on debating the three bills in the Budget package.
This is the fourth time in five years that a draft Budget was submitted and passed after the start of the year, after an earlier draft of this year’s Budget sparked large-scale protests and brought down the Rossen Zhelyazkov government in December.
Protracted government coalition talks that followed the October 2024 elections delayed last year’s budget, while early parliamentary elections in both 2022 and 2023 also got in the way of the timely passage of those years’ Budget packages.
The package put forth by Roumen Radev’s Cabinet, Bulgaria’s first since joining the euro area in January, has come under harsh criticism from various quarters, including the central bank, economists, private sector bodies and trade unions, for its high deficit target and lack of reforms.
The 5.7 per cent Budget deficit in the Budget will breach EU fiscal rules by a wide margin, but Bulgaria was already set to be subject of an excessive deficit procedure based on last year’s Budget deficit, as recommended by the European Commission in June and formally confirmed by EU finance ministers earlier this month.
The economic growth target set in the Budget is 2.6 per cent and it sets the debt ceiling at 37.7 billion euro, with the government allowed to borrow 10.1 billion euro in new debt this year, including 3.26 billion euro from EU’s Security Action for Europe (SAFE) financial instrument.
Although debates on the State Budget Act lasted more than 12 hours on July 23 and 24, the bulk of amendments to the bill, which Parliament passed at first reading last week, were rejected. MPs opted to first vote on the bill’s macroeconomic framework, which left no room for major modifications to any Budget spending provisions.
(Photo: parliament.bg)
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