Bulgaria’s GERB Party, ABV Movement Willing to Extend Coalition Talks

The center-right GERB party and the ABV Movement had a 3.5-hour meeting on Sunday. Photo by BGNES

Center-right party GERB and the left-wing ABV Movement have reached agreement on most of the issues on the agenda of the coalition talks.
Sunday’s 3.5-hour meeting between GERB, the winner in the early elections on October 5, and the ABV Movement was the last one within the first round of talks on forming a government.
Rumyana Bachvarova from the Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) party announced at a press conference on Sunday that the two parties were willing to continue consultations on forming a government on an expert level.
Bachvarova, as cited by the BGNES news agency, noted that GERB and the Alternative for Bulgarian Revival (ABV) Movement had several major differences, including the issue of increasing the role of the state, the construction of new nuclear capacity and the moratorium on the Belene NPP, and tax policy.
She explained that GERB was in favor of the flat tax rate, while the ABV Movement demanded progressive taxation with an income-tax-free threshold, and that GERB was firmly opposed to the lifting of the moratorium on the construction of the Belene nuclear power plant, unlike the party of Georgi Parvanov.
She informed that the two formations had agreed on the parties they were unwilling to team up with in a coalition government.

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