site.btaNew Parliamentary Session Begins Friday

Parliament opens its autumn session at 9 am on Friday. The opening sitting will be held in what used to be the Communists' Party House.

Traditionally, the agenda for the first day of a new session includes declarations by the parliamentary groups where they outline their priorities. 

The decision to move the legislature to the Party House was announced in August 2023 by Parliament Chair Rossen Zhelyazkov, who explained that the historical building a few blocks away needs thorough refurbishment. He also said that the move would be temporary and that no decision had been made to turn the historical building into a museum.

An attempt to move the legislature was made five Parliaments ago, by the 44th National Assembly, whose 10th session opened in the St. Sophia Hall of the Party  House after a BGN 18 million refurbishment. But it turned out that these were the first and last MPs to hold their sittings in this building as the next Parliament decided to return to the historic building, which, it was argued, "is an embodiment of the spirit of parliamentarianism". 

One of the reasons for the controversy over the move to the Party House was that it offers limited access to the MPs for the press. The rooms where the deputies will be working will be off-limits for the press and they can only talk to the MPs at two spots in the lobby after the central entrance and outside the plenary hall on the third floor.

Now, more than two years or 890 days later, twelve rows of benches for the MPs under the glass dome of the St. Sophia Hall are waiting to go in use again by the 49th National Assembly.