site.btaDialogue with Employers, Unions Restored, Meetings to Resolve 2026 Budget Details Start Friday, Says GERB Leader Borissov

GERB-UDF Floor Leader and GERB Chair Boyko Borissov said on Facebook on Thursday that the dialogue between employers and trade unions has been restored, and on Friday meetings will begin at the Finance Ministry to finalize all details regarding the 2026 State Budget Bill.

“The state stands behind every Bulgarian citizen,” Borissov added, noting that this consensus was reached during a meeting at GERB headquarters with Finance Minister Temenuzhka Petkova, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Innovation and Growth Tomislav Donchev, Budget and Finance Committee Chair Delyan Dobrev, former Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov, as well as Confederation of Employers and Industrialists of Bulgaria Chair Kiril Domuschiev and Bulgarian Industrial Association President Dobri Mitrev. Representatives of the two national trade unions, the Podkrepa Confederation of Labour and the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Bulgaria, also attended the meeting.

Borissov also said that working groups and the National Council for Tripartite Cooperation will also be reinstated, and that representatives of the four parties supporting the government will participate in discussions on the draft budget.

Commenting on the topic earlier on Thursday, Prime Minister and GERB member Rosen Zhelyazkov said: "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. […] 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 stressed.

On Wednesday evening, people flooded streets in downtown Sofia at the square known as the “Power Triangle”, where the new National Assembly building is flanked by the President’s administration building and the Council of Ministers on Wednesday evening, to protest the adoption of the 2026 budget bills. The protest lasted more than six hours and ended after midnight. The gathered citizens formed a human chain around the National Assembly building and booed the MPs as they left the building. The demonstrators chanted "Mafia". "The budget has a hole in it, we do not want bankruptcy", "No consensus? No second reading", "You are using our money to make trouble", "I want a future in Bulgaria", "We are fed up! We want to live normally" some of the posters carried by protesters said.