site.btaDeputy PM Gabriel: Cabinet Members Must Meet Three Criteria to Keep Job after Rotation

Talking to journalists here on Friday, Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mariya Gabriel listed three factors that will be taken into consideration when deciding which ministers will stay upon the Cabinet's rotation.

She was referring to an arrangement made in early June 2023 between the two largest groups in the incumbent Parliament, Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) and GERB-UDF, according to which Nikolay Denkov of CC-DB and Mariya Gabriel of GERB-UDF were to rotate as prime minister and deputy prime minister over a nine-month period, starting with Denkov. Subject to this understanding, the two parliamentary groups plus the Movement for Rights and Freedoms voted the Denkov Cabinet into office on June 6, 2023. The PMs' rotation is due to take place on March 6, 2024.

The first factor is the results of each minister's performance, the Deputy PM said, recalling that "we have a governance programme with measures, legislative amendments and reforms." The second factor is the way in which Bulgarian citizens have felt this performance. The third factor is the good relationship with the parliamentary groups backing the Government, Gabriel pointed out.

"The substantive talks will indeed start today [Friday], but they will start with the principles under which the rotation will be implemented," Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov said at a briefing in Parliament. Gabriel said, for her part, that the process is being launched and there is enough time to handle it. She declined to discuss cabinet changes at this stage.

Asked whether Interior Minister Kalin Stoyanov will still be part of the Cabinet after the prime ministers rotate, Gabriel said that "we are working well" with Stoyanov.

"If the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, in coordination with the Government-backing political parties, determine that I should stay as interior minister after the rotation, I am ready to finish what I have begun," Stoyanov told his joint news briefing with Gabriel.

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is following the situation in the Black Sea," the Deputy PM said. As a guiding principle in any situation, she singled out "our compatriots' health and the possibility for them to return home," she commented. "We are not talking of Bulgaria joining an operation but rather of exchange of information," the Deputy PM specified.