site.btaUPDATED GERB Leader Borissov: We Have Absolute Grounds to Declare We Want to Continue Governing

GERB Leader Boyko Borissov said that his parliamentary group “has absolute grounds to declare that it wants to continue governing.” In a live Facebook broadcast on Monday, he said that “after such difficult governance, GERB is the leading political force.”

Borissov argued that thanks to his party, nearly BGN 5 billion have entered Bulgaria. He pointed out that over recent years the country’s gross domestic product has increased almost fourfold and that Bulgaria has become wealthier. “Bulgaria’s exports have risen by 40%,” the GERB leader said.

Earlier on Monday outgoing Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov returned an exploratory mandate to form a new Cabinet on behalf of GERB-UDF immediately after receiving it from President Rumen Radev. On December 11, 2025, Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov tendered the Cabinet's resignation following nationwide protests against the 2026 budget bill and corruption.

GERB can only be proud of its governance over these 11 months, Borissov said. “If in a future parliament we have 90 MPs, no one will be able to climb on our backs; when you have 66 MPs, you are forced to do so,” the GERB leader further stressed. According to him, the outgoing government had been “good, but quiet”.

He also said that towns and villages expect the work to continue, and that meetings with GERB mayors across the country are ongoing. In his words, their specific obligations and projects must proceed at full speed.

“Overall, during our time in government, solely from EU funds - which had been frozen by all other governments - our party has absorbed 99.8% of the European assistance. In total, around BGN 63 billion have entered Bulgarian companies and citizens,” he said.

“Only we did not allow illegal migrants to roam our cities, in the way they have set both America and the European Union alight,” Borissov also said. “Only we have been held up as an example. President Donald Trump himself has told me personally: ‘How do you do this, man?’,” Borissov added.

Borisov suggested that the late 2025 protests that prompted the resignation of the GERB-led govement, was paid for by smuggling operations.

“Ever since [Continue the Change leader and former Finance Minister Assen] Vassilev ceased being the sole master of the Customs and tax service, over BGN 14 billion more have entered the public purse - in less than a year. Can you imagine how smugglers are rubbing their hands and hoping that [President Rumen] Radev, Assen Vassilev, or some other will come and remove us, who stopped their smuggling business, and how tax and VAT fraudsters are praying and lighting candles in the churches we built, wishing we weren’t here so they could cheat again. And a large part of them financed the protests. They know it themselves, and people in Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria have already started speaking about it,” Borisov said.

The GERB leader also criticized Sofia Mayor Vasil Terziev for failing to contain an ongoing waste management crisis.