If the consensus is to work with an extension budget, that's also an option. This was stated by Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov in the program "Sunday 150" on Bulgarian National Radio.
The budget was submitted by the government - a complex budget draft, adopted on first reading. Withdrawal can only occur after the first reading by a decision of the National Assembly. If the procedure starts from the beginning, it means a decision of the Council of Ministers, new drafting, National Council for Tripartite Cooperation and withdrawing the current draft will cause us to lose about two months just in procedures. This implies preparing an extension budget, which will apply for 2026 - i.e. the 2025 budget already transformed into euro. This is a systemic risk and therefore our understanding is that it can happen if the government, trade unions and employers reach agreements on the general parameters.
Now we are looking at what is the substance around which we need to unite, added the Prime Minister. In the current draft budget, social spending is with a 12% increase and the protests against the budget are the first in history against a budget in which there is a significant increase in social spending. According to him, if an increase in spending and a decrease in revenues is desired, it must be said what will be done with the deficit. The protests are not social protests, they are not like those in 1996, in 2013 and others from our new Bulgarian history, when the expectations were to have more social protection.
When we were preparing this project, we realized that there should be more spending towards groups that need more protection. In it there are measures that anger a large part of the active social groups, said Zhelyazkov. The protests united many ununitable groups, people protesting against the euro, protesting for more liberalism, for more conservatism, for systemic and anti-systemic policies, and there are generational differences - a protest of the young, who are the typical generational outburst against the status quo and conservative, added Zhelyazkov.