On Wednesday, Bulgaria’s centre-right former prime minister Boyko Borissov, whose party won elections last April (the fifth in two years) without the votes needed to govern alone, indicated Mariya Gabriel as a possible prime minister of a government of coalition.
Gabriel has a career of more than ten years in the European Union: she was an MEP, she served on various commissions and was European Commissioner for the Digital Economy and Society and, currently, for Innovation, Research, Culture, education and youth. She has been shown to break the political deadlock Bulgaria has been in for some time, but it is unclear whether she will receive the support of other parties in parliament.
Much depends on Let’s Keep the Change (PP), a center party led by another former prime minister, Kiril Petkov, who has so far been a clear opponent of Borissov and has refused any cooperation. Petkov had governed for just over six months in 2022: in the last elections, last April, the PP had been the second with the most votes (with 24.6 percent of the votes), after Borissov’s party, Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB), which obtained 26.5 percent of the vote.
Those in April were the fifth election within two years: in all these cases a majority winner had not emerged from the vote and the various political forces had not been able to agree to form a government.