site.btaOutgoing PM: "Mariya Gabriel Made Huge Political Mistake, We Should All Look for Way Out"

“Mariya Gabriel made a huge political mistake, we should all look for a way out of it,” outgoing Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov told journalists in Brussels. “It should be discussed in the course of the negotiations whether she could be prime minister," he added upon his arrival to participate in the two-day European Council meeting.

He said he has heard that there is an idea for Parliament to vote only Mariya Gabriel as prime minister rather than the entire government. "This would be a distortion of the Constitution,” Denkov said. He added that there is no elected prime minister, as long as there is no elected Council of Ministers. 

“The sensible solution is to sit at the negotiating table and start from the initial position,” Denkov noted again. “I am ready for reasonable compromises that will lead to a working government,” he stressed.

“We are waiting for an invitation from the mandate holders to resume the negotiations for a government, we are available as long as there is a desire,” Denkov said.

The rift between Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) and GERB-UDF opened up when, following over ten days of government talks, on March 18 GERB-UDF Prime Minister-designate Mariya Gabriel announced that she had fulfilled a mandate to form a government and took to President Rumen Radev a tentative list of ministers without securing CC-DB's endorsement for it. The CC-DB people on the list, including Denkov himself and Finance Minister Assen Vassilev, said they had not agreed to participate and would not back the government. Vassilev said that Gabriel is the "beautiful face of the Mafia", further widening the rift. 

On Thursday CC-DB put out a position in which they said that it is GERB-UDF's responsibility to offer a solution to a crisis they had created. GERB-UDF responded that talks are possible only after an immediate "public political apology" and after the withdrawal of Assen Vassilev from the negotiations and from his participation in a possible future cabinet. GERB stands firmly behind Mariya Gabriel, the formation said.