site.btaSocial Partners to Mull 2026 Budget Bills on Monday

Bulgaria's National Council for Tripartite Cooperation (NCTC) will meet on Monday, December 8, the Government Information Service said on Friday.

According to the meeting's agenda, the social partners will consider the drafts of a 2026 National Health Insurance Fund Budget Act, a 2026 Public Social Insurance Budget Act, and a 2026 State Budget Act.

Earlier on Friday, the trade unions, the employer organizations and the government reached an understanding on the key parameters of the 2026 draft budget, Finance Minister Temenuzhka Petkova said, emerging from a session with the social partners. The social partners agreed on a maximum monthly contributory income of EUR 2,300 in 2026 and a 10% pay rise for all employees in the public-financed sphere, a reduction of planned capital investments by EUR 450 million in national co-financing and EUR 300 million on EU programmes, and 2026 budget expenditures at 40.1% of GDP.

Petkova said further that after Monday's NCTC meeting the budget bills will be laid before the Council of Ministers and will be submitted to the National Assembly in the afternoon of that day.

The NCTC is only an advisory body, but the law requires that its members should consider the three budget bills before they reach Parliament. On November 5, however, the Council's meeting was cancelled when the employers boycotted it in protest against the initial version of the annual financial plan, which envisaged a rise of the minimum wage, a 2 percentage points' increase in retirement-insurance contributions, and doubling the dividend tax rate from 5 to 10%.

Despite the thwarted tripartite dialogue, the Cabinet approved the three budget bills on November 13 and sent them to the legislature, incurring criticism from President Rumen Radev, who argued that the budget had been prepared and presented in a way "disrespectful" to social partners and taxpayers.

Following mass-scale protests in central Sofia in late November, the pro-government majority decided to review the initial version of the budget, cancelling the controversial increasing and scrapping the automatic raising of salaries in certain public-financed sectors like defence and security. The Government committed to address the resulting BGN 1.5 billion fiscal shortfall by cuts in the capital investment programme and revenue side measures. That was also when an intention was made public to reconvene the NCTC in early December.