Bulgarian MPs Freeze Their Salaries

The salaries of Bulgarian MPs are tied with the average monthly wage as reported quarterly by the country's National Statistics Institute. Photo by BGNES

The Bulgarian Members of the Parliament decided Wednesday to freeze their salaries until the end of the current term.

Only 97 MPs were in plenary hall for the vote – of them 96 were for and 1 against.

The salaries of the MPs are tied with the average monthly wage as reported quarterly by the country's National Statistics Institute, NSI. The update of salaries of MPs then leads to update of those of other senior politicians.

Senior Bulgarian officials received a pay raise at the end of January despite an earlier decision of the government to freeze these salaries.

The increase of between BGN 252 and BGN 504 a month was explained then with the MPs "forgetting to vote on the wage freeze."

MP's salaries were BGN 2 196 a month until the end of January, and went up automatically to BGN 2 448.

This led to the increase of salaries of President, Rosen Plevneliev, Prime Minister, Boyko Borisov, the Speaker of the Parliament, Tsetska Tsacheva, and of all ministers.

The Deputy Chair of the Parliamentary Group of the ruling Citizens for European Development in Bulgaria party, GERB, Dimitar Glavchev, explained at the time the MPs did not vote on the freeze over the long break around the winter holidays and many other important Bills that had to be passed.

Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Simeon Djankov, voiced surprise and said he learned about the salary increase from the media.

"This is wrong. We should increase other incomes before upping ours. I will deal with this ASAP," he pledged.

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