site.btaContinue the Change Expects Joint Centre-Right Presidential Candidate by End of Summer

Continue the Change (CC) leader Assen Vassilev said on Saturday that he expects the democratic Right-wing to nominate a joint candidate for Bulgaria's presidential election by the end of the summer. Speaking to reporters before his party's annual general assembly, Vassilev said the nominee should be "a figure who is ready to clearly point out the government's mistakes when they occur" rather than "a rubber stamp for everything that happens in the country."

He added that the candidate should be someone Bulgarian citizens can identify with as a president and said CC would not support the nominee of the GERB-UDF coalition.

Vassilev said the party's annual meeting would review its work over the past year. He noted that since the parliamentary elections and CC's separation from its former coalition partners in Democratic Bulgaria, more than 400 new members had joined the party.

Looking ahead to the local elections, Vassilev said CC aims to support candidates committed to the development of their municipalities who are not tied to business interests, have no vulnerabilities that could make them subject to political pressure, and would work in the public interest. He added that such candidates do not necessarily have to be members of Continue the Change to receive the party's backing.

Commenting on the government's performance, Vassilev described it as "a complete failure." He argued that President Rumen Radev's administration had abandoned the commitments on which he had been elected, particularly with regard to fiscal policy.

"He was elected promising to put the budget in order because it was the budget that brought down the previous government. Instead, we now see a budget with a larger deficit than that proposed by former finance minister Temenuzhka Petkova, more spending on public procurement and government maintenance, frozen maternity benefits, frozen social payments, and measures that hurt small businesses and the Church," Vassilev said.

He also alleged that former communist-era State Security officers were being appointed to senior positions in the administration.

Asked whether Continue the Change would respond to the 2026 state budget, Vassilev said the party had already done so with strong criticism. He recalled that the first protest against the budget had taken place in December 2025 during the second reading of the budget bill in Parliament.