Bulgarian MPs lose seats as court files wrongful candidacy

14/3/2025 6:09

Sixteen Bulgarian lawmakers

lost their seats on Thursday after the Constitutional Court

found they were wrongly elected during a partial recount of the

October election.

The court looked into the election after a complaint by the

nationalist Velichie Party, which initially missed the 4%

threshold to enter parliament by just a few votes.

Velichie was awarded 10 seats after the recount, the election

commission said in a televised meeting. The other six seats were

allocated to four small parties.

A fragile ruling coalition led by the centre-right GERB Party

lost five seats but hung on to a razor-thin majority with 121

seats in the 240-seat parliament.

The constitutional court rejected calls for a full recount in a

statement on Thursday. Still, the partial recount from hundreds

of polling stations added further uncertainty to Bulgaria's

unstable political scene, where for years fractured parties have

failed to win majorities or form stable coalitions.



The October poll, which GERB won with about 26% of the vote,

was the seventh election in four years. But it was not until

January that Bulgaria's parliament approved a cabinet led by

Rosen Zhelyazkov, a former parliament speaker, ending months of

coalition negotiations.



Bulgaria needs a period of stable, well-functioning

government to accelerate the flow of European Union funds into

its creaking infrastructure and nudge it towards adoption of the

euro. Plans to join the euro zone have already been pushed back

because of missed inflation targets. Accession is currently

slated for January 1, 2026.