site.btaUPDATED TISP Leader Trifonov Says 2026 State Budget Was "Too Social"

In a video published on his Facebook account on Sunday night, There Is Such a People (TISP) leader Slavi Trifonov said that the 2026 state budget was too social and that he made a compromise because of the protesters. Trifonov was joined by TISP Floor Leader Toshko Yordanov and TISP MPs Stanislav Balabanov, Dragomir Petrov, and Aleksandar Valchev.

The leader of TISP said: "This budget was too social. I am a very right-wing person, but I had to compromise with myself when the budget was being drawn up because of people like those who protested—young healthcare workers, etc.—so that there would be money for them. Now the budget they protested against has been rejected. There is no budget, and they don't have that money."

Trifonov accused Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) of suffering from insecurities. He shared that years ago, he was approached in the gym by a man he did not know. That person confessed that he used to work in the security services under Atanas Atanassov (today, Co-Chair of DB) and had been tasked with planting an envelope full of drugs in Trifonov's car. Trifonov then had to be pulled over and to be accused of being a drug addict. The leader of TISP concluded: "They were going to cook me, because back then [former prime minister and former leader of the UDF] Ivan Kostov hated anyone who opposed him."

Trifonov said that there will be no uncontrolled price speculation after Bulgaria joins the eurozone because of the regulatory bodies.

Yordanov stated that the budget was thwarted mainly by CC-DB, which is why CC-DB should carry the responsibilities stemming from this. Commenting on protests organized by healthcare professionals earlier in the year, he said that postgraduate students cannot expect to receive salaries that are higher than their professors'. He continued: "These salaries should be raised across the entire healthcare system, because nurses and paramedics receive humiliating salaries, and unlike them, they are on the front line. In this budget, they would have received the money that they want."