site.btaAfter Four Hours of Talks, GERB and Socialists Agree on Four out of 18 National Priorities

After Four Hours of Talks, GERB and Socialists Agree on Four out of 18 National Priorities

Sofia, October 13 (BTA) - After more than four hours of talks
here Monday, the right-wing GERB party and the Bulgarian
Socialist Party (BSP) found that they share identical positions
on four out of 18 national priorities from the to-do list of
GERB which won the most votes at the October 5 general elections
but needs a coalition partner to form a stable government. The
results of the talks were made public at a joint news briefings
by the negotiating teams of the two sides.

GERB's Menda Stoyanova said that an agreement was reached on the
Euro-Atlantic orientation of Bulgaria and sticking to the
commitment Bulgaria has made under international accords;
improving the business environment and encouraging investors;
joining the European banking union and creating a single energy
union; and restoring the confidence of the European Commission
in Bulgaria and resumption of EU-supported programmes.

The Monday talks GERB held with BSP - the runner-up in the
elections - were the first of series of negotiations with the
parties to be represented in the next Parliament, scheduled for
this week.

The GERB negotiating team includes Tsetska Tsacheva, Roumyana
Buchvarova and Menda Stoyanova, and BSP is represented by Yanaki
Stoilov, Atanas Merdjanov and Zahari Georgiev.

The areas where GERB and BSP disagreed included financial and
tax policy, and the energy sector, including the abandoned
Belene N-plant construction project and the price of
electricity.

In Stoyanova's words, the two parties agree in principle on two
issues - the troubled Corpbank and the infrastructure projects -
but disagree on how exactly these need to be handled.

Stoyanova also said that the talks focused on 18 priorities from
the GERB election platform and on the 12 "red lines" in the BSP
campaign.

GERB's Tsacheva voiced satisfaction with the way the talks went
and called them "profound and well-grounded".

"For the first time in the new political history of Bulgaria,
the party which has won elections offers all other parliamentary
parties a round of consultations," she said adding that they do
this with the full awareness of their responsibility to form a
government.

GERB will have 84 seats in the 240-seat legislature and will be
the first party to get an exploratory mandate to form a
government. MORE