Bulgarian President Yotova rejects calls to veto Budget 2026
Bulgarian head of state President Iliana Yotova announced on July 29 that she was promulgating Budget 2026, turning down calls and a petition signed by more than 30 000 Bulgarians to veto it.
This came a day after opposition party We Continue the Change presented the petition to Yotova, arguing that the Budget contained numerous unconstitutional provisions.
The largest opposition party, GERB-UDF, has said that it would gather signatures among MPs – at least 48 are required – to refer the Budget to the Constitutional Court. WCC is considering supporting such a referral.
Yotova said that the Presidency could not “allow more institutional and financial uncertainty for the state”.
She said that Bulgaria was still working with Budget 2025, which had been prepared in leva, while as of January 1, Bulgaria had adopted a new currency, the euro.
“For seven months, Bulgaria has been working under conditions of a twice-extended budget for 2025, prepared and operating in leva. And from January 1 2026, Bulgaria adopted the euro.” she said.
“More than three billion euro have not been paid, about one billion will not enter the revenue part of the Budget, because they have already been collected in advance,” Yotova said.
“These three billion include projects owed in previous years, but unpaid to this point. The time has come to pay the old bills.”
According to Yotova, Bulgaria is “the only country in the European Union that operates in such conditions financially”.
Referring to the constitution empowering the head of state with the right to refer legislation back to Parliament for reconsideration, she said that doing so with the 2026 Budget Act “would put the state’s finances at even greater risk after August 1 2026”.
Yotova said that the calls on the Presidency to immediately implement “this partial budget” for five months were “many times more than the negative opinions”.
Returning the Budget would leave the activities of municipalities, social payments, health care and education “even more blocked,” Yotova said.
The Presidency’s legal team had found no grounds for unconstitutionality, she said.
(Photo: president.bg)
