site.btaUPDATED Caretaker PM-Designate Glavchev Presents Cabinet Structure, Line-up

Prime Minister-designate Dimitar Glavchev on Monday presented to President Rumen Radev his proposal for composition and lineup of a caretaker cabinet.

• Prime Minister: Dimitar Glavchev
• Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance: Lyudmila Petkova
• Minister of Foreign Affairs: Ivan Kondov
• Interior Minister: Atanas Ilkov
• Minister of Innovation and Growth: Rosen Karadimov
• Minister of Defence: Atanas Zapryanov
• Minister of Environment and Water: Petar Dimitrov
• Minister of Energy: Vladimir Malinov
• Minister of Regional Development and Public Works: Violeta Koritarova-Kasabova
• Minister of Agriculture and Food: Georgi Tahov
• Minister of Economy and Industry: Petko Nikolov
• Minister of Labour and Social Policy: Ivaylo Ivanov
• Minister of Justice: Mariya Pavlova
• Minister of Health: Galya Kondeva
• Minister of Education and Science: Galin Tsokov
• Minister of Tourism: Evtim Miloshev
• Minister of Transport and Communications: Krasimira Stoyanova
• Minister of Electronic Governance: Valentin Mundrov
• Minister of Culture: Nayden Todorov
• Minister of Youth and Sports: Georgi Glushkov

On August 22, Radev mandated Glavchev, the current head of the caretaker Cabinet, to form a new caretaker government. The President said its topmost priority should be to combat vote buying.

If the mandate is fulfilled successfully, Bulgaria will hold snap elections on October 27, the President said.

In his previous capacity as Bulgarian National Audit Office (BNAO) President, Glavchev was among six senior office holders among whom Radev had to pick a potential caretaker PM. He was the only one who publicly declared his readiness to accept this position after BNAO Vice President Goritsa Grancharova-Kozhareva was designated to form a cabinet but the President rejected her proposal on August 19 after she refused to replace Kalin Stoyanov as her interior minister nominee. 

Minister of the Interior will be Atanas Ilkov. Radev expressed gratitude to Glavchev for choosing to change his proposal for interior minister. The head of State told Glavchev: "As soon as tomorrow morning [Tuesday] I will issue a decree appointing your proposed government, and I expect it to be sworn in before the National Assembly the same day."

The other new names present in the line-up presented by Glavchev are Ivan Kondov and Krasimira Stoyanova who took over as ministers of foreign affairs and transport from Dimitar Glavchev and Georgi Gvozdeykov respectively.

Glavchev's caretaker cabinet will be Bulgaria's eleventh since this form was institutionalized by the 1991 Constitution. To this day, an interim government ran the country between October 1994 and January 1995 (headed by Reneta Indzhova), February-May 1997 (Stefan Sofiyanski), March-May 2013 (Marin Raykov), August-November 2014 (Georgi Bliznashki), January-May 2017 (Ognyan Gerdzhikov), May-September 2021 (Stefan Yanev), September-December 2021 (Stefan Yanev), August 2022 - February 2023 (Galab Donev), February-June 2023 (Galab Donev), and April-August 2024 (Dimitar Glavchev). The first caretaker cabinet was appointed by President Zhelyu Zhelev, the second one by Petar Stoyanov, the third and fourth by Rosen Plevneliev, and the remaining seven by Rumen Radev.

That latest caretaker cabinet will be the second one to be formed by the rules that were set in place by the revision of the Constitution in 2023 and the second ever to be headed by the same prime minister.