site.btaPM Zhelyazkov Vows to Restore Dialogue with Trade Unions, Employers Over Draft Budget

"We will sit down at the negotiating table, we will once again try to restore dialogue with the trade unions and the employers, and we will try to achieve macroeconomic indicators for the budget that will be satisfactory for a large part of business and for a large part of society,” Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov told journalists here in Parliament on Thursday. 

“We need to find the golden mean in income policy, and I am confident that in December, through dialogue with the trade unions and the employers, we can achieve it,” he added. “As early as this week we will take the necessary steps to invite the employers and the trade unions and to begin, I would say, this process anew,” Zhelyazkov announced after a discussion with the partners in the governing coalition. 

Earlier, GERB leader Boyko Borissov said that he had told the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance to withdraw the draft budget or find a legal mechanism, because it has been adopted at first reading, and until dialogue with the National Council of Tripartite Cooperation is restored and until everyone reaches an agreement on how the country will be governed in the coming years, the existing budget for 2025 will remain in use. 

On Wednesday evening, thousands of people filled streets in downtown Sofia and the square known as the “Power Triangle”, where the new National Assembly building is flanked by the Presidency and the Council of Ministers, to protest the adoption of the 2026 budget bills.