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Former EU Commissioner Mariya Gabriel on Monday withdrew her nomination to be the next Bulgarian prime minister.
Gabriel’s withdrawal capped two weeks of tortuous negotiations between her center-right GERB party and the reformist anti-corruption alliance of We Continue the Change and Democratic Bulgaria (PP-DB) in what was supposed to be an agreed government rotation.
In a note to the speaker of Bulgaria’s National Assembly, Gabriel said that the “coordinated refusal” of 11 ministers to participate in her proposed government “and the lack of agreement during the subsequent negotiations, renders meaningless the procedure for electing prime minister and Cabinet,” according to several local media reports.
“Thus, in practice, the development of the constitutional procedure cannot end successfully,” Gabriel added.
Nikolai Denkov, who represents We Continue the Change, led Bulgaria’s government for the first nine months of the planned rotation, with Gabriel as his deputy and foreign minister. He resigned earlier this month, theoretically paving the way for Gabriel to become prime minister for the next nine months.
Now it’s all fallen apart — and, as the second-largest party in parliament, Denkov’s We Continue the Change is next in line to have the chance to form a government.
Gabriel, who previously ran the EU’s digital and innovation portfolios across two terms as a European commissioner, left the EU post last year after being picked as prime minister nominee by the former leader and GERB boss Boyko Borissov.
