site.btaContinue the Change Joins Parliamentary Groups Opting Out of Friday's Extraordinary Plenary Sitting

Continue the Change (CC), too, will stay out of the extraordinary plenary sitting that the National Assembly is scheduled to hold on Friday, the party's Co-Chair Kiril Petkov told journalists here on Thursday.

He was asked to comment on a statement by Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) leader Korneliya Ninova that her parliamentary group will not attend Friday's sitting at which the legislature is supposed to take a vote on a presidential veto on Energy Act amendments and on draft legislation concerning Lukoil's fuel depots.

"We will not be in Parliament because people have two days to decide who will be the person who will be running their settlements over the next four years," Petkov pointed out, referring to the October 29 local elections. "Everything related to Lukoil can always be resolved after the elections. Now is the time to speak about infrastructure, kindergartens, schools and hospitals, so that people could make the right choice," the CC Co-Chair said. 

Of the six parliamentary groups, three (GERB-UDF, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms and There Is Such a People) are expected to turn up in the debating chamber on Friday. Combined, their MPs number 116, five short of the 221 MP quorum required for a sitting to take place. Vazrazhdane and BSP for Bulgaria have declared that they will boycott the sitting. 

"When Bulgaria is unable to gain over 2 billion a year from its own infrastructure, it would be a huge omission to fail to do so. I personally congratulate the Finance Minister, despite the petition to the Constitutional Court," Petkov said. He was referring to President Rumen Radev challenging a legislative amendment introducing punitive fees on Russian natural gas transmission and transit through Bulgaria.