site.btaParliament Opens New Session

Sofia, January 11 (BTA) - Parliament Thursday formally opened its new session. In an address to the MPs Parliament Chairperson Tsveta Karayancheva urged for more constructive thinking, unity, more results and less "sermonizing from the rostrum". She also urged that Bulgaria's EU Council Presidency be used as a cause for greater unity instead of opposition.

The parties in Parliament made opening statements mapping out their priorities in the next six months.

GERB

Floor leader Tsvetan Tsvetanov said that GERB's priorities will be fighting corruption, coming up with a new model of health care, and education. Tsvetanov noted that the National Assembly will host six key events during the Bulgarian EU Presidency. "The good news and political messages to the whole of Europe will originate in Sofia," he said, stressing that MPs must not waste the chance for Bulgaria's voice to be heard. "Partisan passions will not help this," he said.

Tsvetanov also stressed that the incumbents will not seek "unprincipled unity and bogus consensus" with the opposition at any cost.

GERB's foreign policy priorities will be regional cooperation, Bulgaria's accession to the Schengen area, the preparations to join the Eurozone, and scrapping the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism.

BSP for Bulgaria

Kornelia Ninova, floor leader of the BSP (Bulgarian Socialist Party) for Bulgaria singled out the following priorities of the new session: health care, education, incomes policy and an uncompromising fight against corruption.

"On January 17 we will introduce a motion of no confidence in the government over corruption because this cabinet has made it possible for 10 billion leva to be stolen every year," said Ninova. She quoted a Eurobarometer survey which found that 83 per cent of Bulgarians identify corruption as the key problem. She also said the evaluation of 88 per cent of public procurement offers is biased.

Ninova wished Bulgaria's EU Presidency to achieve two goals: a fall in corruption levels and a slightly narrower gap between living standards in Bulgaria and elsewhere in the EU. She described reality in the first ten days of 2018: fewer babies born in 2017, protests by municipal hospital staff, and higher industrial electricity prices. She added that the expected rise in food prices would eat up the rise in the minimum wage and in pensions from January.

United Patriots

Floor leader Volen Siderov said that the United Patriots coalition will continue to work for increasing the living standard in the country and improving the conditions for doing business.

Siderov noted that at the moment Bulgaria plays a balanced part in the Balkans and Europe, and acts as a link between non-European and European countries. "Bulgaria has never had a better position," he said.

Siderov said that the world has changed since 2007, with the neo-liberal alternative giving way to conservative ideas, which in Bulgaria are championed by the United Patriots and the centre-right parties.

Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF)

MRF floor leader Mustafa Karadayi said stability in the Balkans depends on the pace of European integration of the countries of the Western Balkans, as well as on continuing and enhancing EU-Turkey dialogue. "We cannot imagine that lasting stabilization of the Balkan region can be achieved without including Turkey, the largest and strongest economic and military power in the region, in the European processes, however difficult this may seem at the moment," he said.

The MRF wants Bulgaria to insist that the agenda of the EU institutions include its entry in Schengen and the Eurozone and the place of the countries of the Western Balkans in the EU.

Karadayi stressed that his group was aware of the government's wish to be allowed to concentrate on the EU Presidency, but the MRF cannot make life easy for the cabinet because "all Bulgarians want just the opposite". The MRF feels duty bound to raise the problems concerning all Bulgarians: the lack of serious reforms of all public systems; corruption, which impairs the business environment and administrative services; the ineffective spending of public funds; poverty and incomes.

Volya

Volya party head and floor leader Vesselin Mareshki said that his party would focus on one single thing - improving the Bulgarians' living standards. Volya will work to improve people's incomes, security, health care and education.