site.btaMedia Review: March 14

In a challenging and long-awaited decision on March 13, 2025, the Constitutional Court partially annulled the October 27, 2024 elections, ruled that 16 MPs in the 51st National Assembly were unlawfully elected and that the Velichie party will enter Parliament with ten MPs. This remained the dominant topic in Bulgarian media on Friday.

ELECTION RESULTS LIMBO

bTV showed an infographic with the amount of votes won and lost by parties after the recalculation of the October 27 elections results. Most votes are lost by Movement for Rights and Freedoms – New Beginning (-1110) and GERB-UDF (-452). Vazrazhdane lost 108 votes and BSP – United Left – 42. Velichie gained 59 votes and entered Parliament while the second-highest rise is reported in There Is Such a People’s (TISP) results (+31). Morality, Unity, Honour (MECh) gained 28 votes, Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) gained 11 and Democracy, Rights, Freedoms – DRF won 1 more vote. Here are the changes in seats in Parliament: GERB UDF (-3), CC-DB (-1), Vazrazhdane (-2), MRF – New Beginning (-1), BSP – United Left (-1), DRF (remains with the same amount), TISP (-1) and MECh (-1).

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Several media outlets quoted GERB leader Boyko Borissov, who saw a conspiracy that robbed his party and threw the blame on President Rumen Radev: “He cannot continue with his hypocrisy, because his judges did all of this,” he said. Three of the 16 outlawed MPs were part of the GERB-UDF parliamentary group.

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In an interview with the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR), Alpha Research Managing Partner Genoveva Petrova said that the way the situation with the constitutional case has developed over the last week, all the scandals it has been accompanied by, have first of all raised doubts not only in the fairness of the elections, which have existed for a long time, but also in the fairness and objectivity of the verification of the results. "We have seen that over the last week there has been unquestionable pressure from the political parties on the institutions that were supposed to carry out this verification," she added. Petrova highlighted the fact that the Bulgarian Socialist Party and There Is Such a People were among the formations that referred the case to the Constitutional Court and before becoming part of the ruling majority claimed that this was one of the most flawed elections. Subsequently they were the biggest advocates of no change and attacked the Constitutional Court the most. "All the institutions that were in any way involved in this case - the Constitutional Court, the Central Election Commission and Information Services left the impression that they were trying to distance themselves from the responsibility they had," she added. Petrova stressed that the parliamentary majority, although at the sanitary minimum, would still be maintained. The sociologist does not expect a constructive role and much activity from the Velichie party in Parliament. 

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BNR had an interview with New Bulgarian University Centre for Election Studies Programs Director Daniel Stefanov who argued that the fact that Velichie entered Parliament does not confirm the thesis that the elections in Bulgaria were rigged and the vote was replaced. Less than 1% of the votes have been corrected by the Constitutional Court-appointed experts with about 15% of all votes counted, or this is "a pretty good sample", Stefanov's assessed. “There is no systematic error in the data that goes against the Velichie party. No such error can be seen against any other political party. The errors are more or less equally distributed,” he pointed out.

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Mediapool.bg highlighted that Velichie leader Ivelin Mihaylov will have to "divest from companies" to become an MP. "I have companies that are in my name and I have to divest from them so that I can be fair to the law, which requires that I have no business activity. I have to find a way by Sunday to resolve these things," the media outlet quotes Mihaylov as saying. He added that he hopes to be the parliamentary group's Floor Leader. 

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On Bulgarian National Television's morning show, BSP - United Left MP Gabriel Valkov said all parties owed an apology for the way the elections were conducted. "There is no way one person can decide what happens in a section because there are 7 representatives from 7 different parties inside," he said. Machine voting is not a bad step, Valkov said, but he clarified that it is debatable whether elections are fairer when voting is done by machines. He added that he trusts the Constitutional Court but has doubts about the actions of the experts appointed by the court. 

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On Bulgarian National Television's morning show Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria MP Andrey Tsekov said that the Central Election Commission and the Constitutional Court were under political pressure from those who are the main beneficiaries of the fraudulent vote. "Tsekov added that there should have been a complete recalculation of the vote, "to end once and for all the argument whether the election system with the manual counting of votes is effective."

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On Nova Television’s morning show, journalist Kalina Krumova and political scientist Lidiya Daskalova agreed that “the way in which Bulgarian elections are held is outrageous”. They highlighted the fact that not a single person has been imprisoned for buying and selling votes. According to them, the responsibility for this lies with the investigating authorities and the prosecution.

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On bTV’s morning show, constitutional judge Yanaki Stoilov, one of the two rapporteurs in the case, described it as “the most difficult since the establishment of the Constitutional Court”. “From the very beginning I put before the court my opinion that after we finish with the examination of the case, we should send the data to the prosecution service,” he said.

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Also on Nova Television’s morning show, former Central Election Commission (CEC) member and Constitutional Court-appointed expert Krasimir Kalinov said that the election results published by CEC do not correspond to the real ones. He added that an investigation should be made into the lists and the filling in of ballot papers. Another CC-appointed expert, Zlatogor Minchev, underlined that the case showed that hybrid voting leads to a lot of errors in the electoral protocols, and the way the papers are stored should be improved. “The Election Code must be changed and voter confidence restored,” he stressed.

ECONOMY

Capital.bg quotes Euromonitor International data, according to which e-commerce in Bulgaria grew by 7.1% in 2024 and reached BGN 2.8 billion. Despite this growth, the country still has a low share of online shoppers - only 57% of internet users make purchases online compared to an EU average of 77%. Only 15% of Bulgarian companies sell products online, below the EU average of 24%. The volume of e-commerce is expected to continue growing at 12% per year until 2029, reaching nearly BGN 5 billion.

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Trud quotes the CEO of construction firm GBS Invest, Radoslav Kotlarov, as saying that housing prices are normalizing, with a rebalancing to follow after the initial effect of eurozone entry. He explained that at the moment there is great euphoria because of the dynamic development of the real estate market, which leads to the entry of investors without experience who buy expensive and overpriced plots. Therefore, 2025 will be critical - end customers need to choose the investor and builder carefully to ensure their security. Kotlarov added that there has been a shift in customer priorities - from the initial focus on location to the overall quality of the product and living environment.

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A Telegraph research shows that Poles, Germans and citizens of other European countries are among the main buyers of homes in the country sold off by Russians. The daily quotes National Statistical Institute data, according to which Russians have been selling their properties in the country as access has been difficult since the war in Ukraine. The newspaper quotes broker Atanas Butilov, who claims that most interest in properties in the resort of Bansko from foreigners comes from Israeli and Polish citizens. There are also an increasing number of Czechs who want to own real estate in the winter resort. The largest market in the country after Sofia is the one on the Southern Black Sea coast, namely the towns from Nessebar, through Pomorie and Burgas, to Tsarevo. A total of 8698 transactions were made in 2024 in Nessebar, while in Burgas they were 8704. In the seaside resorts, properties have doubled in price in the last five years and the average price is currently EUR 1,000 per square, said Evgeniy Yanev, a broker from Varna.

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24 Chasa reports that 1.16 million cars move in Sofia every day, with drivers paying a total of BGN 20 million per day to park in blue and green parking zones. The media outlet quotes data from the Centre for Urban Mobility report for the first nine months of 2024.

AI

Trud features an interview with the director of the Institute of Robotics with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Prof. Avgust Ivanov. According to him, artificial intelligence will not leave people unemployed, as the aspiration is to strip away the hard and unattractive work for humans, replace it with machines, and give people only control functions.